The Magic of What Could Have Been (or, Blink, and You Might Miss It)
by Amy Vaughn
Summary: Penny believes in magic. Sheldon is part of the reason why.
1. If If If

Penny believes in magic.

She was raised by a practical farmer and a slightly weary woman on dusty fields. She was taught Jesus, and Land, and Family (in that order), and she knows that her parents are confused by her, largely appalled by her choices, and have had to reconcile their high hopes to Land and Jesus.

Her brother and sister have played their part in this, Penny knows, but it feels like their disappointment is all on her. She's the one who left. She's the one who had dreams

(_and she'll never mention that those dreams weren't even of acting, but of just getting away, far from the dust and crops and glowing heat of summer, where everything shimmered and yet nothing seemed to move, and finding a new life, maybe somewhere that never stopped. She never thought she would miss the stark beauty that she hated growing up, but she knows she'll never miss it enough to go back, no matter what her momma predicted.)_

that took her away from everything they knew to be true. No matter how supportive they try to be in the present, she remembers the tears in her daddy's eyes and the way her mom wouldn't speak to her for the week after her eighteenth birthday when she told them she was leaving.

She was raised this way, by loving people in a loving place and taught morals, and values, and what she decided to believe in was magic. It even surprises her sometimes. But it's not like she had a choice.

They make fun of her, the boys, her boys, for this belief.

Penny can't imagine being as smart as they are, but she knows she's no dummy either. She can see Leonard's gentle eye roll, quickly hidden, when she mentions her horoscope. She'll catch a glimpse of Howard's tilted smirk or make out half a joke at her expense, whispered from Raj into Howard's ear.

And Sheldon. Well, she doesn't listen to his constant lectures on why psychics are charlatans, on why crystals have no power to energize your physical form, on why your horoscope has nothing to do with your personality or future because so many thousands of people will share your birthday and even the exact time of your birth and then we would be in cloneville (or whatever) and why don't we leave that up to the scientists. He very well might be right. But that has little to do with magic.

She doesn't listen to Sheldon because he's part of the reason why she still believes.

#

The third time it happens to her is the first time she meets them, after what she affectionately refers to in her memory as the 'hi marathon.' They've invited her over and her eyes are drawn to Sheldon, the leanness of him, his height. He's not her usual type; she generally preferred more muscled guys with hardened cheekbones and cocky swaggers but something about his dark blue eyes, so steady and vaguely curious

(_cataloguing her even then, or trying to, and she couldn't get it out of her head, what her Nana had told her at the age of 12, "PennyBlossom, always look close at the tall men who don't seem to realize their height. They'll protect you right, even if at the beginning they don't know they can," in her softly ruffled voice, and this Sheldon was trying to fit her in somewhere in his head, that much was obvious, but he couldn't figure out where)_

and maybe attracted—okay definitely attracted, she was never mistaken about the sparks—makes her body follow in his direction when they enter the apartment. It's clear he doesn't know how to stand, where to put his hands or even his gaze, but that's okay because one of the things Penny has always tried to be is kind when other people feel awkward around her—it's one of her gifts.

But yes, it's there, his gaze on her face, the cautious intake of her body when she glances away. She calls him on being one of those beautiful mind genius guys (lucky she finally saw that movie, she thinks, only the previous week, and wonders if it's some sort of sign.) and he leans briefly against his squiggle board and then Leonard speaks up and she's properly admiring of him as well—he seems lonely, and eager to please, and that makes her heart hurt a little for him—and as she gets a whiff of the food she gets a

(_those blue eyes, widened in a sort of surprised wonder, and face lightly perspiring as he chuffs out an exhale that makes her hair brush back. She sinks down onto him, feeling her legs clench, the inner core of her tightening and his hands scrabble for purchase on her hips, sure to bring violet bruises in the morning. As he lifts up, going deeper in time with her rhythm, she's abruptly certain that he's never done this before and even more certain that neither has she, not like this, and she leans in to plaster her body against his chest, so she can feel every inch of him as he makes a sound, like a whisper or a moan or a sigh that she knows she will remember for the rest of her)_

brief flash that starts her skin tingling and ends immediately as she sits down on their couch. The boys are arguing about something she can't quite understand and she tries to shrug off the unsettled feeling (like being dipped in champagne and then blasted with a fire hose or something. Penny has never been good at analogies) that overtook her. She feels let down and is strikingly aware that Leonard is the one that wanted her to come over, the one who wanted her to have lunch with them. She likes him well enough for someone she just met; he seems sweet, if far more nerdy than anyone she's ever met in real life. She asks if it's okay if she starts to eat and Sheldon turns to see her.

She hears his comment with a sinking stomach. "Um, Penny, that's where I sit."

_Oh._ Oh.

She tries to turn it, but isn't surprised when it doesn't work.

#

Her first experience with the magic, the knowing of what _could have been_, was at fourteen when Mikey Tiller had asked her to his junior prom. Mikey was the quarterback and although Penny knew she was a shoo-in for cheerleader next year, she hadn't been able to try out this year due to a stupid sprained ankle that would've put her off horse-riding altogether if she hadn't been so stubborn.

But Mikey was just the _cutest_ and the _coolest_ and somehow always managed to bring the booze to the parties that Penny was only this year starting to get invited to, parties that usually consisted of a bonfire in a barren field, a boombox turned up too high, beer, and several blankets provided by hopeful high-school boys. She had attended a couple with her friends since Homecoming and found them vaguely boring but usually couldn't find a good enough reason not to go.

At the last two, Mikey had spent some time with her, and at the most recent party, he was at her side half the time until he finally asked if she would be his date at the Prom. Trying not to lean away from him (she would never get used to the smell of beer on someone's breath), shocked that he had asked her instead of Sandy Marks (that bitch, flirting with him all night and trying to draw his attention away from _her_), Penny said yes.

Technically, she wasn't supposed to be allowed to start dating until she was 16, but she had been so thrilled, so filled with excitement about going to her _first real formal dance_ that her father had only given her a weak lecture, her mother had only rolled her eyes with a smile, and both of them had allowed Penny two hours of phone-time with Beth for the run-down of 'how'd he ask you,' and 'did he try to kiss you,' and 'what will you wear?' before insisting that she get off because it was almost eleven.

She talked to her Nana, she talked to Beth and Patty and Georgia. She went dress shopping, found a strappy black dress with a poufy tulle skirt inlaid with crystals that hit her at knee length that she could not afford with what babysitting money she had left over from summer. When her daddy wouldn't shell out the money for nothing, Penny helped him rebuild two tractor engines after school and on her day off- in addition to her regular chores and because Sundays were for church- until she had enough. Because Daddy was proud of her for working so hard, he surprised her by buying the shoes she had her eye on (she had resigned herself to wearing her momma's plain black pumps instead of the crystal studded, satin black heels that went perfectly with her dress) three days before the dance.

(_And really, there was no way to describe how much those shoes meant to her, such pretty, girly things bought on a whim of fatherly love for the daughter he had practically raised to be the son who wouldn't let him down. She screeched at him with delight when he bowed low over the proffered box, and then put them on and insisted that he turn her around and around in the kitchen so that she could break them in, even though she could see that it made him sorta happysad to see her looking so grownup.)_

She had gone on two kind-of dates with Mikey and a group of their friends down at the nearby Dairy Queen—because she was well aware that a school formal was the exception to dating, not the rule—in the weeks before the dance, and each time found herself crammed into the booth right next to him, marveling at how warm his leg was against hers, even through the denim, and at how her heart speeded up whenever the sleeve of his jacket brushed against the back of her neck. Each time she saw him, she liked him more.

On the day of the dance, Penny carefully shampooed and conditioned her hair

(_can't breathe! "Stop it!")_

and slipped into black stockings and the strapless push-up bra she had secretly borrowed from Patty who hadn't been invited to the dance, but who was—luckily—her size. She unzipped her perfect dress and shimmied it up over her hips

(_pinned down with hard hands, too strong to struggle against and no room in the cab of the truck to pull away and a cruel set to those lips she had dreamed of kissing and mean laughter in her ear and the sound of her dress tearing and fear, ohmygod she was gonna throw up)_

and zipped it up before pinning her hair up with rhinestone clips—stopping because she felt weird and dizzy for a moment—and then put the finishing touches on her make-up. Penny sat on her bed to slip on her shoes

_(this was actually happening this isn't what she thought this hurt so bad he seemed so nice her cheek was throbbing and she could taste blood and oh her beautiful dress was ruined and she stared at his shoulder as he grunted above her and waited for him to)_

but paused, one of them in her trembling hands and one of them, waiting, on her lap. It was fading already, that feeling, but Penny was nothing if not stubborn—nothing if not sure—and she carefully put her shoes aside, leaned over, and picked up the phone on her nightstand, dialing the number she hand memorized before she could change her mind.

He picked up on the second ring. "'Lo?"

"Mikey, it's Penny."

"Hey Babe!" He sounded pleased. "I was just 'bout to leave."

He sounded so nice, so sweet, that she felt herself hesitate for a second and then pushed on, too scared not to. "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, but I think I'm sick. My stomach—"

His voice changed, just slightly, took on a hardness that somehow felt familiar even though she had never heard it before. "You don't sound sick."

"I just. I think I ate something. Wrong, you know?"

He exhaled explosively. "Well, do you think you'll be feeling good enough to go on a drive after the dance is over?"

"No," she said slowly, "I think I'm in for the night."

The silence hung heavy for a moment before charming Mikey Tiller said, "Fuckin' cocktease," and slammed down the phone in her ear.

Later, when her brother Tommy came home and mentioned that Mikey had been at the dance with Sandy as a last-minute but apparently perfectly acceptable substitution, Penny felt unnerved. The jealousy she kept expecting to hit her never came; neither did the automatic irritation she felt whenever Sandy horned in (or tried to) on something that was hers. It wasn't until she was lying in bed, unable to sleep, that she managed to pinpoint what she was feeling as worry.

And it wasn't until Monday, when Sandy showed up to school unnaturally quiet, with a fat lip and a bruised jaw that Penny—with a sickening lack of surprise—understood why.

#

There aren't as many people as you'd hope in this world that are both caring, steadfast and comfortable to be around. Usually, Leonard hits three out of three (although sometimes two when Penny looks close enough and feels a little smothered by just how big his crush has gotten on her), and Penny feels herself falling in love with him slowly.

Or. Well. She cares about him enough to want to care about him as much as he cares about her. He just moves so fast, emotionally, and she's pretty certain that Beverly has a lot to answer for in terms of his emotional development—although Penny wouldn't ever claim to be healthy in the area of relationship choices. Leonard was supposed to be the chance to make a better decision and she's not sorry even though… Even though—

The point is, she cares about the guy. He's funny and warm and works hard at making her happy. Sometimes Penny wonders how hard someone should have to work

(_like how hard she always feels like she's working, pulling out all of the stops in bed, things he'd never experienced because she can't compete with his other girls in other ways, brainy ways, so she has to have something to give him. Or how she always tries to be Happy!Penny and Supportive!Penny all because a little over a year ago he gave her a college brochure and succeeded in making her feel more stupid than Sheldon ever had, and it kind of hurts too much to be reminded that he ever thought less of her like that; at least Sheldon is always honest.)_

to make someone happy, if they're meant to be together. He lets her pick the movies sometimes, and then laughs nervously when she asks him if he liked it; he compliments her food like she can't taste it herself when she's done a bad job (really only laziness; her Nana taught her to cook better than any of them—with the exception of maybe Sheldon—grew up eating), and Penny can never decide if these traits are endearing or annoying. Sometimes they're both.

But Leonard is, above all, a good person, unlike a lot of the men she's known before. He was the first one (the very first) to treat her like she was something precious, someone he could aspire to, rather than someone he could get and own and sling an arm around possessively (although if there's a certain amount of possessive arm-slinging, she's willing to ignore it as a good trade-off) and it feels nice.

_He_ feels nice. She's surprised by their sexual chemistry, so disappointingly lacking in the beginning, this man-boy who she'd brushed up to great proportions in his absence over the summer. But then he'd okie-dokie'd her (thank _God_, how horrible would that have felt, to give up that acceptance that he so willingly offered after one jumbled bout of sexual awkwardness), and things started tripping along smoothly.

He's easy to please in a lot of ways and Penny is grateful for that. So she doesn't understand why Sheldon is the one that she has this—this, _sense_ for, this _magic_ with. It hasn't happened with Leonard yet, not in the three years that she's known him, not in all of the time she's spent wrapped up in sheets with him, tangled on the couch with him, laughing over jokes she _almost _understands with him. She has such a fondness for Leonard, and barely understands Sheldon at all, so when things happen

_(like feeling an anxious sort of delight, not while he's dressing her or copping an accidental feel after her fall in the shower, but later, when she's lying in bed next to him, drowsy from the drugs, and feels his fingers brush over her hair and the word _glimmering_ hushes quietly in her mind, in his voice, as though he had spoken it aloud when he most certainly hadn't._

Or

_the sour anger—that she immediately twists into surprised amusement because what right does she have to be angry?- pooling in her stomach when she watches Beverly grab Sheldon and kiss him far less tenderly anyone should ever kiss someone like Sheldon for the first time because somehow Penny knows that kissing him should start slow, and gentle and involve nibbling on his unexpectedly full lower lip._

Or most disturbingly

_when he hugs her after she says she'll bow out of going to Switzerland with Leonard—and good Lord does she deserve a hug for that one; who the hell turns down Switzerland with their boyfriend on Valentine's Day?!—and she has to push away a flush of arousal when she feels his warmth encompass her for the second time and she has a sudden clear image of sitting at a beautifully set table with beautiful food and watching a beautifully dressed Sheldon get up (bending carefully to kiss her so lightly on the corner of her mouth it feels like a shiver) to deliver a speech and suddenly Penny knows she's in Stockholm and Sheldon has just won the Nobel Prize in Physics and she's so proud she wants to cry…)_

she feels guilty, like shouldn't they be happening with the man she's in a relationship with? Shouldn't they be happening with the man who cares about her too? But they're so fleeting, each instance, it's easy to pretend to ignore them, especially when Sheldon tends to treat her with the determined indifference of a grudging pet-owner to an excited puppy.

So when the end comes with Leonard, she knows it's her own damn fault for not loving him enough to say it, for nurturing this—this _thing_ that keeps happening in her head with Sheldon, for being so uncertain about the right course, for the first time in her life. She deserves this heartbreak, has brought it on herself, and yet can't stop herself from a first few guilty moments of relief, a feeling she successfully manages to ignore in the following days until she runs into Sheldon at the mailboxes and ends up inviting him to a spaghetti dinner.

He shows up, an hour and a half later, more disheveled and sweaty than she can ever remember seeing him—and she's seen him returning home from the arctic, and after a nine-hour Halo session.

All goes well as a reboot of friendship-after-coitus-with-his-roommate and Penny has started to relax slightly after dinner and a dessert of cheesecake that Sheldon oddly only picks at (she knows for a fact that he likes it; it's the only one he ever orders when he decides to get dessert at the restaurant), and when he offers to help her with the dishes she accepts just to avoid a lecture on how much dangerous bacteria will be festering on them if she leaves them in the sink overnight.

They stand side by side and at last Sheldon starts to sound like Sheldon as he explains why he uses a counter-clockwise circular motion with the scrubby side of the sponge ("if you start at the innermost center and circulate outwards, any residual food particles will be successfully transferred off the plate and into the sink for a more thoroughly clean dish. Please remember to do this at least for a count of twenty on each plate next time, and then run them under the water for at least the same amount of time; I'm fairly certain I saw at least two spots on your plate before you served up the spaghetti and whether that's food particulates or left over soap stains, it's unacceptable. No matter; my plate met with rigorous inspection.") before handing them to her to dry which Penny does, haphazardly, before placing them in her dish strainer.

He hands her the last glass (and, really, those tips he's been rambling on about that she's already forgotten must work because that glass wasn't as sparkly when she first pulled it out of the box) and Penny doesn't know what it is—maybe the way she was admiring his hands at the moment, long and graceful and reddened from the hot water; or the fact that she let herself enjoy how it felt to stand next to him and not feel too tall; or that she inhaled and could smell the soap and the water and Sheldon's shampoo (Johnson's Baby Shampoo, she's pretty sure) and maybe something else from him, a whiff of markers or dust or something she can't quite figure out—but when she reaches out to take the glass, her hand covers his for a moment and

_(if if if. His hands thread delicately through her hair and he murmurs, "I have always admired that the scent of your shampoo has never made me sneeze."_

"_That's what you admire?" she teases back lightly, walking backward to the couch, careful not to lose his touch._

"_I won't deny that there are appealing qualities beyond that. The smell of oranges is long reputed to be refreshing; most citrus scents are," he says quietly, dipping his head again to kiss her—not quite chastely, but with none of the hurriedness she associates with other men. Her tongue traces the inner curve of his lower lip as his hands slip from her hair, down her back and to her hips. She lowers onto the couch and he follows, perching on a knee between her legs, hunched over, thoughtful, taking his time._

_Her hands come around to his chest, and she thinks, 'It is so easy for me to love you,' as he lowers himself more fully against her and her heart skips in response to the slow shuffle of his clothed body against hers. One large hand reaches down to cup her breast and she tilts her head back, arches her body into the feeling and her right leg comes up to encircle his hips while)_

she freezes, Sheldon freezes, and for one never ending moment she is looking into his eyes

(_blue, blue eyes peeking up at her from a face buried in her lap. She feels, rather than sees his smile as is fingers and tongue and dedication to learning and perfection work their magic on her body and Penny shudders against him, feels the waves overtake her, distantly hears her own voice crying out)_

and she's sure, somehow _sure_ that he can see it too, that he's right there with her. Penny knows with a flash of intuition that if she leaves her hand on his that this crystallized moment in her mind will someday happen; knows that not everything she's thought about Sheldon's quirks is true or at least not insurmountable; knows that, as passionate as she _is_, there is so much more passion out there that she ever could have anticipated.

(_if if if._)

But Penny almost-loves Leonard, far more than she could admit to herself a few days ago when he told her _he_ loved _her_ and her heart hurts in a way it didn't even when Kurt cheated on her, when any of the others hurt her because Leonard was her boyfriend and surprising best friend and she can't let herself see any kind of a future with someone else, not yet.

(_no matter how much she wants it in that instant and she does, she does)_

And so she jerks her hand away.

The moment ends and Sheldon gives a strangled hiccuppy gasp as the glass drops out of his hand and hits the floor where it breaks into, luckily, only three large pieces.

He mutters, "What—"before shaking his head and leaning down to cautiously pick up the glass. His eyes glance up at her from the height of her hips and Penny clutches at the edge of the sink, her knuckles turning white as she resists the pull of that memory, that_ goddamn knowing that she can't explain_.

It seems to take forever before he straightens and clears his throat awkwardly, shaking his head a little as he deposits the broken glass into her trash can.

He turns to face her and Penny braces herself for a demand or explanation or _something_ and Sheldon coughs mildly again before saying, "When I came out of the restroom, I heard you on the phone. You're planning a trip to Disneyland, soon, I gather?"

Penny shifts, not sure what to say for a second. (Why is he the one that can do that to her? Was she wrong? He didn't' see it?) "Yeah, next week," she finally answers.

"You know, the Disneyland monorail is actually quite the feat of engineering," Sheldon starts and with some amount of determination, Penny lets go of the feeling, the memory, and lets Sheldon talk to her about trains.

#


	2. The Incidental Similarities of Childhood

Penny loved her Nana. She tries explaining their relationship to Leonard, feeling something close to pity when she sees the bewildered expression on his face.

"It's just—she always knew how to make me smile," Penny tells him. "She wasn't maybe the smartest woman, but she always said that common sense beat out smarts any day of the week—no offense," she adds hastily when Leonard's eyebrows started to inch up, and he relaxes with a smile. "She was funny and she never judged me and I could always, you know, _go_ to her if I had a problem, and I knew she would be there. Not even like with my mom and dad, because they always felt like they had to parent me, like my choices were somehow their choices or reflected on them…"

She takes a deep breath, sensing that Leonard isn't understanding her; wanting him to. "We were just close, you know?" she blurts out, unable to find the right words.

"Not really." He gives her a helpless half-shrug and takes her hand, rubbing little circles in her palm with the pad of his thumb. "You know my family isn't… like that," he says diplomatically.

Penny does know, but minutes before it had felt so urgent to share her Nana with him, one of her closest friends. She's disappointed, but nods gamely, not wanting him to feel bad.

"She sounds like she was amazing, though," Leonard adds encouragingly. "You saw her every day?"

Penny smiles and sighs, looking down at her hand in his. "Pretty much. She lived on our farm, on a little cottage about two acres from my house. Daddy fixed it up for her when she moved there, before I was born. She had a year-round vegetable garden and she would always let me help her harvest whatever was in season."

Leonard turns to Sheldon, who is typing furiously on his computer. With a start, Penny realizes that she'd forgotten he was there; he seemed so uninterested.

"You used to do that with your MeeMaw, didn't you?" Leonard points out. "You know, I never thought about it, but you guys actually have a lot in common."

Sheldon's hands still on his keyboard and he swivels in his chair to face them. "Indeed I used to help Meemaw in tending her gardens, but I would hardly compare my life with Penny's by claiming we 'have a lot in common,'" he says, with a vague haughtiness that manages to irritate the crap out of Penny. "I am, of course, a multi-published theoretical physicist of good standing with certain inroads to a future Nobel Prize and she is a waitress at a restaurant. The most we 'have in common' I would say, is the food she delivers to me every Tuesday night at six o'clock."

Halfway through his sneering speech, Penny finds herself on her feet, hands fisted and tears (_of anger, it's important to remember that_) in her eyes. She inhales and with all of the calm she can muster finally says, "We have nothing in common, right? Not growing up in small towns where football is the only religion besides actual church, and even then most churchgoers tend to stay home when there's a game on Sunday? I can't kick your ass at Halo, take you to the comic book store when you need a ride, sing you Soft Kitty when you're sick, give you advice when you've offended one of your friends so badly they never want to talk to you again? If I'm just some lowly waitress put here to serve you, why do you even put up with me? You think I didn't love my Nana _just as much_ as you love your MeeMaw?

"You know what? Why do _I_ put up with _you?_" Swiping an angry palm over her eyes, she turns to Leonard and says stiffly, "I'll talk to you later."

Leonard's face is wretched; he looks torn between murderous anger at Sheldon, and the urge to cry for her. Sheldon's expression hasn't changed—if anything, it's flattened out, become stone. Neither of them moves as Penny walks out of their apartment, closing the door quietly behind her.

#

The second time it really happened was two months after Penny's seventeenth birthday. There had been little instances, here and there through the previous three years

_(getting in the truck with Daddy, leaning against his arm and seeing him lying crumpled in the middle of steaming, twisted metal. Saying, "Just a minute, Dad, gotta go to the bathroom," and spending ten minutes locked in there until the nausea subsides._

Or

_Fidgeting against John Mitchell in the cafeteria, laughing at his jokes, and seeing him dip his head sweetly to kiss her goodnight on her porch, seeing his shake Daddy's hand and grinning at him suddenly, not understanding why when it never happens, what she did wrong _

And even

_stashing her little baggie of weed in her bottom drawer and seeing Momma find it as she puts her folded laundry away; moving it instead to her bookshelf and again seeing her mother lift it up and start to cry before Penny finally shoved it to the back of her desk drawer, underneath her make-up and feeling certain her momma would never know.)_

but they were always brief, and sort of skittering. She wondered if she was crazy, if maybe it was the weed or the wine she was enjoying at Marcy's house (because Marcy's mom could never tell if there was one extra empty wine bottle in her trash), or even Tommy, dealing meth, could he maybe have given her something second hand—or would that be third hand? Penny was sure something like that was possible, but always reminded herself of the time it had happened before she'd ever tried any kind of booze or drugs and before Tommy had started showing up for Sunday dinner smelling like chemicals.

She broke finally on the tale-end of the John Mitchell thing (he hadn't called and it was getting obvious that he was never going to), one afternoon a few weeks after her birthday while trimming green beans on Nana's porch. Penny sat on the porch swing with the bowl on her lap and worked automatically—snap twist drop pickup snap twist drop—as she watched the warm sunlight slowly inch off her legs and spread farther away from her like warm honey. After several minutes, Nana came out from the kitchen with another bowl and sat down next to her, taking a long, silent measure of Penny's face.

"Do you want to talk 'bout it?" she asked gently.

That willing ear, that gentleness she always associated with her grandmother, those few words, were all she needed. Penny heard herself start to talk. She told Nana about John Mitchell, and Daddy's truck (she left out the baggie of weed and a few other things), talked about how scary it was, that big first time, and how Mikey went on to a football scholarship the following year and how Sandy got so nervous that people started calling her "the basket case," right to her face, until she dropped out and moved in with her cousin over in Lincoln.

Nana listened to Penny as she tried to explain how sometimes it felt like she could make things different or better and sometimes, no matter what she did, the bad always came and the good never showed up.

Nana listened until Penny was out of words and almost out of breath, until all of the beans were trimmed (and had been for a while) and the crickets were starting to chirp and finally, when Penny fell quiet, Nana asked, "Do you want to know what I think?"

"_Yes._ Please."

Nana scooted closer until their arms were rubbing and hips touching. "I think most people don't have a sense for the way things could turn out. I think some people do, and of those that do, you probably got a few who can sense it real well. I think you can't always explain the magic that happens to you, but that doesn't mean you should ignore it if you got the chance. I think some things can be changed and some things can't, and sometimes they change on their own and there's nothin' any of us can do about it.

"Mostly, I think you're my sweet girl," she said firmly, "and I most certainly don't think you're any kind of crazy. You got a good head on your shoulders a lot of the time and when you don't, it's usually 'cause you've got a good heart. So I don't want you worrying too much, you hear?"

Penny nodded, slouched down, and rested her head against Nana's shoulder. The porch swing swayed gently underneath them as Nana started talking about the crickets, and the sunlight, and the green bean casserole she was going to make for Sunday dinner, and Penny listened and started feeling better.

A few weeks later, Penny was walking after school, furious that Derek and Georgia had flaked _again_ on giving her a ride, to the point where she'd missed the bus. It was over three miles home, and she was wearing her new boots and in the muddy dustiness after the late spring storm, it was just a disaster.

She used the irritation to march at a fast clip, cutting through fields to get home faster (the dirt roads were packed better, but her shoes were practically ruined anyway and the moist heat from the storm of the previous day had burned off and now it was just—hot.) and was closer to Nana's than her own house when she saw flickering lights in the distance.

Penny put a hand to the stitch in her side and had a

_(Nana's cheeks are wrinkled and soft as she grins in the mirror, leaning down behind Penny, fixing her veil just so. The photographer catches the shot and exclaims, "Perfect," not knowing that Penny doesn't care about the picture, only the moment where she can smell her Nana's powdery scent and feel her soft, fleshy hand adjust a curl of hair at Penny's temple._

"_Something old," Nana murmurs with a sort of sneaky smile. She holds out her diamond earbobs, given to her as a wedding gift from her groom when she was a young woman. Penny gasps quietly and looks at her Nana with searching eyes—Nana knows how much she's always loved these. _

_Penny silently removes the rhinestones from her ears and replaces them with the diamond clusters. "Thank you! I'll give them back to you right after, I promise—"_

"_Now, I didn't say 'something borrowed,' did I? I said, 'something old.'"_

_Penny bites her lip. "Nana, you don't have to; it's too much."_

"_Please, they're yours. They were always gonna be in the long run. I'm just happy my girl is happy and I want you to stay—")_

moment where she could. Not. Move.

And then, with a jerk out of her reverie, Penny started to run. She was out of breath and covered in a fine sweat by the time she reached the ambulance and the stretcher they were wheeling out had someone on it, but the bag covered the person's face.

Penny moaned, wrapping both arms around her waist. Her father, his face cast gray and eyes rimmed, walked down the front porch, pulling her to him just as her legs started to crumple and gray mist started forming in her vision. He clutched at her and she sagged and thought, _"some things can be changed and some things can't, and sometimes they change on their own and there's nothin' any of us can do about it" _and hated herself for not being able to change just this one thing.

#

Penny barely has time to sag against the inside of her front door when there are three quick knocks on it followed by her name. She opens the door when he's done; she doesn't bother to hide her tears.

Sheldon looks at her. "I was out of line."

"I'm surprised Leonard managed to explain it to you so quickly," she shoots back with a watery glare.

"Actually, he didn't need to," Sheldon admits, looking at her uneasily. "Although I'm not generally adept at social interactions and am often lectured by Leonard, or you, or—embarrassingly enough, even Wolowitz—on how one is supposed to behave in any sort of common social gathering, I was aware even as I was making that unfortunate statement that it perhaps should not be voiced at all."

"Perhaps?"

"All right. I shouldn't have said that. You are my friend, Penny, and it was inconsiderate of me not only to speak to you in that manner but also to imply that you don't matter to me," he said seriously, and Penny stopped for a moment, impressed with the magnitude of his apology, unable to remember an instance where he'd been so willing to accept responsibility, and unable as well to just let it go.

"Then why did you?" she asks, firming her voice and lifting her chin.

"I found the… incidental similarities between our childhoods, in particular our relationships to our grandmothers to be… uncomfortable," he explains awkwardly, moving his hands in front of his torso in a helpless gesture before letting them fall at his sides.

"Because I'm so much less than you?" she snaps, surprised that she let herself believe, even for a second, that he could really be sorry.

Sheldon's eyes flicker to hers, away, and then back and he holds her gaze. She feels jolted by him, rooted to the spot, and it's only for that reason that she can make out what he's saying so clearly, even though he says it barely above a whisper.

"I am uncomfortable with the concept of death in relation to people I care about," he says, his eyes unwavering. "My PopPop died when I was young and I… did not care for the effect that it had on me. I was older when my father died, but certain things have to—be taken into account upon the death of a family member, and I don't, I can't think about—MeeMaw—" his voice cracks and something inside Penny cracks with it.

"Sheldon—"

"You were speaking about a close relationship that you had with your grandmother in the past tense. I am usually not very good at reading subtext, but I felt it was obvious by the way you spoke of her that she had passed away, and that you missed her. I didn't like it that I understood your relationship with her and therefore tried to distance myself from you when Leonard pointed out our similarities. We are very different people, Penny, but I shouldn't have said what I said." Sheldon falls silent and waits.

Penny cocks her head and feels her heart soften. It's probably the most honest and self-aware she's seen him be and she feels oddly vulnerable to have witnessed him laid so bare. "Thank you. I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable."

"It was not your intention," he acknowledges soberly, "and that was no excuse for my behavior."

She nods, her mouth sad but upturned, and starts to close the door. Sheldon's hand blocks it lightly and she regards him again in surprise.

"Penny?"

"Yes?"

"You miss her a great deal, don't you?" Sheldon asks.

Her throat feels tight. "Yes, I do."

"When did she die?"

"Seven years ago tonight. I was seventeen," Penny says on a heavy exhale, her breath trembling.

"Penny?"

"Yes, Sheldon."

"I probably would have liked her," he says softly. "She sounds a lot like my Meemaw."

Penny tries to resist it then, but her tears finally spill over and she lets out a groan that sounds like something she heard a long time ago, standing outside a cottage, watching an ambulance drive away. She feels hesitant arms slip around her shoulders to hold her loosely, not very much contact but enough and she nestles closer, just as close as she thinks he'll allow, to cry into the chest of his Superman T-Shirt. He doesn't complain.

After a few minutes, when it seems as though her tears are slowing down, he murmurs, "Penny?" right above her ear and she realizes just how close she's pressed against him, just how much of his personal space he's let her invade without saying a word and she moves away a little before glancing up.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry your grandmother died," he tells her simply. His face, usually only admired _(secretly, silently)_ at a distance, strikes her suddenly as beautiful in his compassion—she's never seen that expression on him before—and she loves him _so much_ in that moment and knows with certainty that she was always meant to be his friend.

"Sheldon?"

"Yes?"

She closes her eyes for a moment, takes a breath, finds his hand and squeezes.

"Thank you."

#


	3. The Way Change Comes

When Penny first met Amy Farrah Fowler, she kinda, sorta, really, really wanted to punch her in the face.

This had nothing to do with her (_strangely wonderful, never to be spoken about or even thought about if at all possible)_ weird connection with Sheldon and everything to do with the fact that Amy reminded Penny so much of a feminine Sheldon and sometimes Penny really wanted to punch Sheldon as well.

A lot of it stemmed from the way both of them tended to be dismissive of her except when they were insulting her. Penny was sort of resigned to it from Sheldon because everyone who knew Sheldon for more than a few days learned to be. However, she was determined not to take it from someone else who could so casually inquire if she felt she "was a slut" because of the amount of men a mathematical equation had told them she'd slept with.

(_And, drunk on tequila three nights later, she pulled out a purple ballpoint and a pad of post-its because she couldn't find a notebook anywhere and did the math herself. Well. Wrote down the names (or descriptions) of the men she could remember and found_ -_**goddamn it, Sheldon! **__– that if you counted early sexual experiences where she didn't go all the way, her "number" was 32. How did he __**do**__ that?!)_

The problem with Amy was that she was so determined not to be ignored by Penny. Suddenly she had a new best friend that she wasn't even sure she _liked_ half the time and couldn't figure out how her life ended up this way; slumber parties with scientists, videogames with... yet more scientists.

She tries to go out and change things for herself, get part of the equilibrium she's comfortable with back and hears her Nana's voice chiding her in her mind (_"Honey, you should know that life doesn't always turn out how we plan. If you like your life, this is something you should be grateful for, not something you should run away from.") _as she makes plans to hit a nightclub with some girls from her acting class, as she lets a random hard body named Nick pepper moist kisses against her neck while they dance.

It's not that it's _unfun_ exactly; it's more that her ideas of real fun have changed. She finds that she likes videogames and trying to follow a conversation from people who don't _(actively, mostly_) make her feel stupid when she just doesn't get it. She likes her smart friends, even Amy—sometimes especially Amy, because how can you _not_ like someone who compares your hair to a sunset-tinted waterfall of silk (even when it makes you a little uncomfortable)?

And the thing with Sheldon fades because Penny makes it fade, or at least is grateful when there are no more big events. She pays no attention to the little things like when he hands her her box of dumplings and her fingers brush his and

_(she walks in and sits on his lap and Sheldon huffs for a second. "Just because I'm on the couch and you are in my lap doesn't mean that you're not in my spot." And Penny smiles and says, "Yeah, but do you really mind?" before Sheldon takes a moment and finally shakes his head with the tiniest of smiles and says, "It's not altogether unwelcome. Just so long as we're clear on the other part for the)_

it sends a full-body shiver through her, right down to her toes. She finds herself trying to distance herself from him even as she's thrown together with him more often—is more aware of his life—because of her proximity to Amy. And she's single and both Sheldon and Amy claim not to be a couple but you don't actually _have_ to be a scientist to see where things are going to eventually lead between them.

Penny has always been free with her touches, her compliments, someone so utterly used to contact that it feels strange to pull away from it, but she has also always been careful not to be a poacher. She can never predict when it's going to happen around him, and when it does, she gets the worrisome feeling that he can see it too

_(for someone who claims to be a physicist with a working knowledge of the universe, he seems so __**startled**__ at times like these, when she's just seen herself watching tv with his legs resting in her lap as he worked on his laptop and she's snaking a casual hand up and down his thigh, neither of them really interacting, but surrounded by an invisible cloud of—of __**togetherness**__ and Sheldon's eyes burn into hers quizzically, his mouth shaped into a tiny 'o' before he turns away and starts discussing Battlestar or D&D or someone that Einstein probably knew and the moment is lost.)_

so it's just easier when she tries not to get physically close to him. No more lectures on how she's invading his space, on how often the average human touches their nose, thereby transferring bacteria. And if she feels a sense of loss, it's a fair trade for what she's getting in return.

#

As time passes without another major instance, and Sheldon and Amy grow closer, Penny finds herself relaxing. She starts to formulate an idea (_a hypothesis) _that the magic exists and she herself can make it stronger by the sheer _wanting_ of what it shows her. There's a lot of things _(variables)_ left of out this idea, she knows, but her stomach rarely flutters around Sheldon anymore; he's Amy's, and that's that. She tries not to touch him when she can avoid it—which tends to be easy because of Sheldon's aversion to physical contact—and when she accidentally does, there are no more flashes.

For a short period, it seems as though Sheldon is touching _her_ more often, fingertips leading her by the elbow or minute pressure on the small of her back and still… Nothing. Penny can't be sure if he was testing his own hypothesis, but she suspects it's something like that.

But it's okay. Things fall into their natural rhythm of couple and couple and couple and Raj. Penny feels such a sense of pleasure at getting back together with Leonard_ (no more wondering, and hoping, and thinking she did the wrong thing._) because almost from the beginning of the beta-test, she admits to herself that she loves him, has loved him for a long time in fact.

She also knows that love wasn't the problem before; pressure was. Leonard likes to move fast to cement things when he's happy, so he never has to feel the uncertainty he had growing up, and Penny doesn't want to go forward just to make him feel more secure about their relationship. But he's given his word that he'll give her time (_and she's proud of herself for not just ending it when he's unable to keep his word_), and their beta-alpha-whatever-it-is new relationship starts bumping along quite nicely.

Things happen; the standard stuff of life.

Penny accidentally shaves the back of Sheldon's head and is awarded 12 strikes, resulting in the need for her to take 4 consecutive classes which she does without complaint this time because hey, she shaved the back of the guy's head.

_(After getting to spend 20 minutes with her hands in his surprisingly silky hair. At one point, Sheldon closed his eyes and leaned his head back against her, almost nestled against her breasts before he straightened abruptly but she doesn't think about that, no, she never does…)_

Amy starts insisting on regular periods of hand holding which Sheldon complains about but allows and yet Penny catches him sometimes when he thinks no one is looking, hand unfurled and poised unnaturally, waiting with an expectant look before Amy begins to "paw" at him.

Bernadette and Howard get married and then _Howard Frickin' Wolowitz_ goes into _space_ (and was she really thinking this was the standard stuff of life? When did this become the standard stuff of her life, having friends that go into space?) to work on the international space station. Penny and Amy stay the next two nights at Bernadette's (and Howards, they guess) apartment so the newlywed won't be too lonely on what should be her honeymoon.

Penny introduces Leonard to a move in bed that she learned with Zack and has deemed "The Rollercoaster Spin," and he, predictably, loves it but that's just fine because so does she. He seems to have picked up some new moves too, or at least a newfound respect for stamina during sex (_gee, thanks, Priya_), which Penny appreciates also.

It gets to be so the majority of her time off work (and, let's face it, quite a bit of her time while she's working, and occasionally sleeping too because how the hell did so many of them get keys to her apartment and why are they all determined to come visit her at 3:04 in the morning?!) is spent hanging out with them, adapting to their routines, fitting in her ideas of fun with theirs, and trying to come up with new things to do with them that don't require any of them to leave the fourth floor of their apartment complex.

This turns out to be its own problem, almost three years after the last major event on the night Howard is coming home from space and they all find themselves bored at home instead of welcoming him back at the airport.

Leonard suggests Pictionary. Penny agrees; she's practically a professional doodler, so she knows she and Amy will have a fighting chance, but what she doesn't suspect is the fact that Sheldon and Leonard (mostly Sheldon, though) will suck so _bad_ at it.

It turns out to be sort of hysterical, beating Sheldon. His frustration, his offense. How can Penny and Amy be beating him at _every single thing?_ (It's one of the main reasons she plays Halo, truth be told. It's always a little less fun when Sheldon's on her team, or when he's not playing for some reason. She likes beating him to a pulp.)

Amy turns out to be delightfully competitive as well, which makes the game even more fun because you gotta get some enjoyment out of the nyah nyahs of it. Penny even manages to beat Sheldon at _math_ for goodness sake, something she never intends to let him live down—although she's sure he'll find a way to explain why it's not his fault he lost.

And then Leonard suggests wrestling and Penny and Sheldon are up first. Penny pins him in under a second and, grinning smugly down at his astonished expression, listens to the little devil on his shoulder. She gives him a sturdy little kiss on the tip of his nose, on his cheek, his forehead, dissolving into laughter as Amy (who Sheldon is obviously hoping will rescue him) joins in with kisses to his other cheek, his chin, ear and temple.

Amy reaches down past where Penny's arms are holding Sheldon to the floor and scratches a wiggling finger under his ribs and Sheldon bucks suddenly as he reacts from being tickled. Penny's heart feels fizzy, _(the childlike sound of his laughter…_) and she throws a leg over his hip to straddle him and keep him pinned. Amy kisses his head again, and Penny reaches down to give him another smack on the cheek.

Sheldon turns his head, struggling under her, outrage at this violation etched across his features when her lips come down not on his cheek or ear like she intended (she's sure), but on his lips.

The kiss doesn't linger; it's a moment of contact, pulled away quickly, even as she realizes that his mouth is moving against hers. Amy and Leonard don't seem to realize that anything strange has happened even as Penny is staring down at him with a fading smile, in seconds that seem frozen into hours as the prettiest pink flush stains his cheeks and she feels

(_twisted up in sheets, limbs tangled together. She knows he wants to get up and shower, but stays him with a gentle hand. She lays her head on his chest and tries to catch her breath as the ceiling fan dissipates their sweat. She runs a loose hand through his hair and swallows. "That was—"_

_His smile is at once satisfied and smug. "It was indeed."_

"_I love you," Penny says softly, her words muffled against his skin. _

_There's a lengthy pause that makes her lift her head up; he's never had a problem with her saying that before and has even returned the sentiment on more than one occasion, so she's not sure what the problem is._

_Sheldon looks thoughtful. "I love you too," he finally says._

"…_But?"_

"_But I find myself searching for another way to express how I'm feeling in regards to you, Penny. That simple statement seems unsatisfactory."_

_She smiles. "I'm satisfied with it."_

"_Yes, you would be," he says sardonically and gives a little grunt as she punches him lightly in the stomach. _

"_Hey!"_

"_I just mean… When I was young—"_

_"How young?" she interrupts. She loves these stories._

"_Six," Sheldon answers with an exasperated eye roll. "Now do you want to hear this or not?"_

"_Do proceed," Penny tells him, waving her hand grandly._

"_Thank you. When I was young, I discovered physics. Obviously, as one of the greatest minds of our time—and quite frankly, I believe of __**any**__ time—I had already had a working knowledge of science for a time. But physics spoke to me on another level. I…" he struggles for the right word and Penny places an open palm over his heart. "I __**connected**__ with it. I wanted to learn more about it; I __**had**__ to. It was integral to my being; it excited me, it challenged me. Physics became my world, because in it was the explanation for everything."_

"_Okay…" Penny says slowly, wanting to understand him. He catches her hand and lifts her fingers to his lips for a quick kiss._

"_You are like physics to me," he says simply. "I want to understand everything about you, and I don't think I ever will."_

_Penny holds her breath, unsure how to process a compliment so massive. Unable to figure out the right way to respond, the right way to tell him that he's her physics, or acting, or jogging, or friendships or fuck it, there's never been anything she's loved as much as him and knows there never will be, she instead throws her leg over his hips and straddles him, pressing a breathless kiss to his mouth._

"_I sense I'm going to have to postpone my shower a while longer," he says wryly, but with a smile lurking somewhere around the corners of his mouth._

"_Just for a little bit," she responds. She kisses him again, opens her mouth, sweeping her tongue in. Sheldon's hands press gently on her back and she feels his erection begin again against the inside of her thigh. She presses down against him and grins as his fingers slide up the indentation of her spine, all the way up to the nape of her neck where he gathers her hair to sweep it off her face._

_Her hips start a slow circular movement that he recognizes and he releases her hair to reach down with one of his long, elegant fingers to touch her clitoris lightly and as his fingers become more slick, warmer, deeper, so do their kisses until everything around Penny is blurry and bright, all one perfect moment blending into the next because that's the way it always is with)_

the shocking heat of Sheldon's sudden arousal pressing against her center. Sheldon doesn't seem to know what to do (and Penny certainly doesn't; she still feels high off of the moment she was just in with him, and she realizes that no more than a few seconds have passed, not even long enough for Amy to have stopped tickling him yet), so Penny raises her arms in the air and declares "Victory is mine!" even as she's discreetly lifting her hips away from his to give them some much needed space in a move that—ironically enough—is similar to what she was doing in her head. He flexes up with the motion and then settles back against the carpet.

Sheldon releases the breath he was holding and moves his hands to her hips as though to push her off. However, they linger for a moment, fingertips tight and almost (_not quite_) painful before he pushes and rolls at the same time until he's on his stomach and Penny is at his side.

Amy is still laughing and Penny forces a panting sort of chuckle as Amy leans down and kisses the back of Sheldon's head once more for good measure.

"Stop that," he squawks one more time, face pressed to the carpet. "I wish I could understand why you women feel the need to torment me, but I don't think I ever will."

Penny lets go of a gasp that she turns into a cough as the echo of his words sound in her mind. Sheldon turns his head sideways and takes measure of her expression; her hand to her mouth. His eyes are narrowed somewhat dangerously, but she doesn't know if it's because of what he could have seen or because of the way she and Amy have so triumphantly violated his rules.

"There's water in the fridge if you need it," he says. "Please get me some while you're there."

They finish the night with a pie-eating contest. Penny's idea.

No touching required.

She and Amy win.

#

This is the year Penny's drinking starts to get away from her. The magic, _(the curse_) seems to be back in full force, every time she's around him.

She makes more meals at her apartment, to share with Leonard alone. She takes Amy shopping, far away from the apartments, and tries to give solid advice to get Amy's begrudging "love monkey" to "quench the fire in her loins." When she is around Sheldon, she notices a definite distance at his end, too; whether it's from embarrassment because she discovered he had working boy-parts or from confusion over this weird thing that keeps happening, Penny can't tell. She chooses to be grateful for what she has and works hard at not rocking the boat.

It's difficult. It seems, after that last time, that Penny only has to look at him and _want_ and

_(the shower pelts them as he pounds into her. His long arm is around her waist, forearm pressed to her stomach, bending her slightly as he stands behind her for—as he explains it—"maximum positioning" to hit her G-Spot. Penny huffs, placing her palms flat on the wall in front of her as Sheldon rocks forward, causing bursts of sensation to overwhelm her. She hears him mutter her name in time with his thrusts, "Penny. Penny. Pen)_

she's visited by some new, fresh hell of desire or pain or

(_they've been having this argument for __**days**__ and it's the stupidest thing ever and it drives her __**nuts**__ that he can't admit that it's not important. It's not like she's backing down either, but come on, it's just wallpaper! It's not even for his private space and excuse her, but she doesn't like the idea of a primary-colored geometric print in the kitchen; she wants a creamy yellow like __**a normal person.**__ He's so frustrating and if he thinks he's going to be able to hold out longer than she is, then he's crazier than)_

something, anything else that she doesn't want to see or know the possibilities of. She really loves Leonard. She loves Amy. She even loves Sheldon, really loves him, and mostly not in the way her head is telling her she does. She doesn't want to hurt anyone.

It starts to seem easier to finish off a bottle of wine. Or three. Every couple of nights.

Bernadette brings it up delicately one night when Penny asks who finished off the wine.

"Actually, Penny, I'm still working on my first glass."

"But weren't there two bottles?" Penny asks stupidly, the alcohol making her tired.

"Um, yes, there were."

Amy is more straight forward when they're out to lunch and Penny has three Long Island Iced Teas and is starting to get sloppy.

"Bestie, are either of your parents heavy drinkers?"

"Nooo," Penny draws out, looking through the make-up in her purse. "My dad will have a few beers watching a game or when he goes fishing. Why?"

"Because studies show alcoholism to be a genetic trait with a higher likelihood of becoming an alcoholic if someone in your direct line suffers from it," Amy says, and carefully sips her Bloody Mary.

"What are you talking about?" Penny asks, offended already. "I'm not an alcoholic!"

"Well, evidence suggests—"

"I'm not!"

"Oh. If you're sure."

"I am," Penny insists huffily, retouching her lip gloss.

"Okay then. Are you drinking so heavily to avoid a troubling situation?" Amy asks innocently.

Penny stops drinking so much the following day. She's surprised at how hard it is to limit herself to one or two glasses, to stay away from the hard stuff; she didn't realize how loose her limbs were staying, how easy it had become to stay in a lightly-buzzed haze every evening. The magic happens less when she drinks, but she doesn't like not being able to recognize herself.

Better then, maybe, not to drink. Better then to want something you can't have and aren't even sure you really want.

#

Penny doesn't look forward to Leonard leaving for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, she knows she's going to miss the hell out of her little homunculus. Since admitting out loud that she loves him, she's developed a deeper closeness with him than she ever has before _(outside of her knowing)_, and once Penny starts really talking about her feelings and fears, it seems as though Leonard relaxes too.

She wonders, _can it really be so simple?_ Earlier in the year, she started comparing her mental wanderings to her meandering present and started to feel listless. So she's astonished it eases, slowly, like a deflating tire. Love doesn't have to be particularly passionate or exciting

_(and it doesn't have to resonate like a heavy bell that vibrates through your entire system)_

to be real, and true, and worth it. She realizes that she's been looking for the drama that accompanies most of her relationships and that it's a _good_ thing when it doesn't show up, because Leonard is a _good_ man, who will do anything for her. She realizes that she's enjoying her life, and that's enough.

She's knows she's going to miss Leonard for his sense of humor (wry and observant and even surprisingly silly at times for someone so smart), for his presence (she lays pressed against him on the couch when they watch television, his feet on the floor; hers curled beneath her. His hands skim their way over her hair and every now and then he'll drop a thoughtless kiss at her temple that makes her feel special), and of course, for the sex.

This one is easy to admit—she's never been particularly good at going without. She just hopes that the video chat thingy that he set up on her laptop will be able to help relieve some of the tension.

She's also going to miss the hell out of him because she knows that if Leonard is gone, she is automatically his closest replacement with Sheldon. Who has never once offered to pay for gas, always assumes that her off-time should be spent catering to his crazy whims, and refuses to admit it, but hates to be alone for longer than a 24 hour stretch. Penny fears that being forced to spend that much time with him will be disastrous for her, for this beautiful balance that she's finally achieved with the status quo.

And yet, she's not sure how to avoid it. Sheldon isn't the type to let her.

It starts immediately, the day Leonard leaves, after he's gotten home. Raj is in her apartment babbling on—she's waiting for Amy and Bernadette to show up to give her a break from this constant stream of words—when she hears Sheldon's patent triple-knock at her door. She answers it and he hands her two sheets of paper, stapled together.

"Thank you, Penny," he says courteously before spinning on his heel and returning to his own apartment.

She scans the papers as Raj continues to ramble. The first sheet is his standard weekly schedule—8:40 AM, leave for work. (Please have your car suitably serviced.) 5:05 PM, pick up from work. (I will call to inform you of any changes to my schedule.) Monday, Tuesday, blah blah blah.—and the second sheet is a simple page for her to fill out and return to him with her work and prior commitments schedule so that he can make arrangements for those hours/days.

She silently hands it to Amy with raised eyebrows when she shows up and Amy gives a little grimace of understanding. "I'll take this upon myself as much as is possible," she assures Penny hastily, "although where I can't, I do hope you'll be able to step in; you know how lost Sheldon can get without a guiding hand."

Penny sighs; she does know. It's for this reason she finds herself carting Sheldon to the comic book store on Wednesday nights when she gets off work before seven, and picks up diced chicken, brown rice and spicy mustard for him (the dude can't drive and it's on her way home) on Mondays. But she's not stupid; she takes precautions whenever possible.

When Sheldon inquires about what play she's currently working on _(Since when did he __**care**__?!) _she makes sure to leave the complimentary tickets for Saturday, because Amy can't make it until then. She remembers to invite Raj and Howard and Bernadette to every apartment meal they have, whenever Amy mentions she won't be able to show. She makes so many plans away from the apartment and with other people that, usually, the only times she has to see him alone are the once-weekly grocery shopping excursions she takes him on, and Amy has (thankfully) taken him on at least half and the occasional ride she gives him to or from work.

This works well for the duration of Leonard's trip. There are very few emotionally confusing moments

(_a lanky body coming up behind her with the barest of touches, fingers floating lightly down the outside of her arms to announce his presence. She leans back with a sigh as his arms slip down to encircle her waist and he cradles her, just for a moment, tucked in under his chin before)_

so when they do occur, Penny can easily pretend they didn't happen, and if she happens to catch a puzzled expression on Sheldon's face, well—she's never understood his thought process, why try to figure them out now?

#

The change happens the way the best and worst of them do: without warning. A first kiss; a drought-breaking summer torrent that never seems to end; getting your period in the middle of social studies while wearing your white denim jean shorts… Losing a loved one.

Two days before Leonard is due to come home, Penny is opening her door after a long day at work, anticipating the moment in thirty seconds where she can kick off her shoes and flop down on the couch like a dead fish when she hears a series of small crashes coming from the boys' apartment. She hesitates, poised at the threshold.

She's so tired, and the very last thing she wants is to get drawn into some weird experiment Sheldon and Howard and Raj are doing, but the noises sounded like… glass or heavy plastic breaking with force. There's no other noise.

Just then, her phone buzzes and she automatically reaches down to check it. It's a text message, from Amy.

_Sheldon's MeeMaw died today. I'm on my way but can't be there for—_

Penny drops her phone and her bag and runs across the hall, swinging their apartment door open just as she hears another, bigger bang. She freezes, her heart racing, as she takes in the scene.

Sheldon is standing amidst several mangled action figures, broken glass from a table lamp, and a heap of books that have been knocked off the shelf. His DNA sculpture has been decimated, and the large marbles are still skittering across the floor, slowing down, finding their resting spots.

"Sheldon," Penny whispers.

He looks up at her numbly; his face is a mask and Penny never realized until this moment how truly expressive he usually is. "My Meemaw—"he says.

"I know." Penny walks toward him, takes his cold hands in hers and steps into him, crowding him. He shuffles closer to her like an old man, his spine curving, and he drops his forehead to rest against her shoulder as she lets go of his hands and brings her palms up to rest against his shoulder blades.

His pain for the moment is her pain, or the ghost of old hurts still haunting her and Penny feels helpless in her compassion, overwhelmed with the desire to fix this, make him better, make things right. Sheldon is the only person she's ever met who has ever received so much care from people and it occurs to her now that people take care of him because he just _needs_ it so much.

He is not crying, or choking, or making any sounds of distress; just breathing evenly, in and out, and she can feel the moist heat of it through her uniform. Her hand slides up to cup the back of his neck and Sheldon lifts his head.

He looks at her thoughtfully, his eyebrows drawn in, and Penny realizes that tears are coursing down her cheeks. This man, so afraid of touching, so disgusted by body fluids and in so much pain, reaches up to wipe her tears away. He rubs his fingers together as if testing the salt content and Penny feels comforted.

"What can I do?" she begs to know quietly.

Sheldon opens his mouth, hesitates. And Penny is struck by a moment—_not _a vision, _nothing_ magic-of simply… feeling loved by him, and wanting to know how to love him enough to take his pain away.

Sheldon looks around at the mess that has always been his pristine apartment. "I thought this would help, but… Amy is on her way," he says softly. "Can you find out when she'll be here?"

The words are strangely jarring. Penny swallows hard and nods, backing away slowly as he watches her. She squeezes his hand again and hurries to retrieve her cell phone, pausing to take a moment as she reads Amy's text. Because now she knows something she didn't understand before—she loves Sheldon more deeply than she knew; the Sheldon that's in her mind, the Sheldon that she knows so differently. The man that's more relaxed, softer. The man that loves her back.

Whatever else this Sheldon feels—for her, and otherwise—he loves _Amy. Amy_ is the one he called first. _Amy_ is the one who will bring the most comfort to him, who will be able to console him in the dark days that are sure to follow. Penny can be his friend.

She feels sad, for so many reasons, but also a sense of… release. She doesn't have to wait. Their fates have been set, for the time being; they've both made their choices. She feels loss, which she chalks up to allowing herself to be on _hold_ for six years, and she feels grief, for Sheldon's anguish.

Penny's on her way back to his apartment to tell him that Amy should be there any minute when Amy shows up, out of breath but calm; steady in the way that Sheldon—of all people—will surely need. She squeezes Penny's forearm as she passes, and then walks into the apartment.

Sheldon has moved to the couch. His head is cradled in his large hands, fingers extended. Amy quietly sits down next to him and slips her arm around his waist. Penny watches as his arm curls over Amy's shoulders and he holds her closer than Penny thinks he might have ever been to someone.

_They love each other_, Penny thinks, sees, and isn't hurt by it at all; she's glad for both of them.

She waits for a moment, and then heads toward his kitchen to make him some hot tea, because that's the custom he's taught her.


	4. A Scientific Explanation Of Sorts

As Bernadette brings her a freshly-blended peanut butter smoothie (she needs the protein, and the iron, Bernadette points out) and Howard and Raj are out procuring her favorite movies, and Leonard sits at the opposite end of the couch, rubbing her feet, Penny wonders why she doesn't feel better.

It's probably a really rare thing, she reflects, to have some of the smartest minds in the state (maybe the country. Maybe the world) at your beck, willing to drop whatever world-changing research they're doing to make you some tea or a peanut butter and banana smoothie.

And, okay, granted, it's not like they ever take vacation time. Penny's just finished filming her second season of Partners In Divorce and she wouldn't have needed any excuse to dive into the time off that hiatus brought—she was so tired at the end of her week, it almost made her reconsider acting now that she'd caught her big (_at least medium-large)_ break.

So it's not like she's _(probably_) hurting any of her friends by allowing them to take time off to help her now that she's on restricted bed-rest for the next few weeks. It's just sort of—_annoying._ And _exhausting_, being the one everyone fusses over. And _disturbing_, in Amy's case, as Penny tries not to contemplate what that email link Amy had sent over means, about the healing rituals of some native tribe Penny can't pronounce where the women gather together for naked massage and dancing, painting symbols on each other's faces in menstrual blood.

But now when Raj comes over to have a "gab session," as he so endearingly refers to them, still, or when Bernadette notices that she's rubbing her gently rounded stomach and guiltily drops her hand, or when Leonard looks at her with those wide eyes, almost hurt

_(and so disappointed)_

that she can't confide in him how she's feeling, all Penny wants to do is roll over and go to sleep.

Remarkably, Sheldon's natural insensitivity is the only thing that has helped the situation, even in the smallest ways. When he visited her in the hospital with an "obligatory" bouquet of daisies and found her puzzling over what the doctor had said, he'd explained in a completely unruffled voice, "An ectopic pregnancy is when the ovum attaches itself outside of the uterus; most usually inside one of the fallopian tubes—"

"I _know that_, Sheldon," she'd responded, exasperated.

"Well, then, I'm sure I don't understand your state of confusion. Although I do want it on record that Amy told me specifically I'm not supposed to talk about this."

"It's on the record," Penny noted dryly. "But it's okay to talk about if I ask you."

"All right then." He inclined his head slightly. "Proceed."

"I just don't get why—I mean, that doctor said that I wasn't going to be able to…" there her voice wobbled only slightly. She took a deep breath and was proud when her words came out steady. "He said that because of trauma, I wouldn't be able to have children?"

Sheldon looked at her blankly for several seconds before swooping down to pick up the chart clipped to the end of her bed. After scanning it quickly, he explained, "Apparently, you had appendicitis as a child and this created a blockage in one of your fallopian tubes."

"How?"

"Scarring," he said briefly, glancing up from the paperwork. "Your working fallopian tube was where the pregnancy occurred and you were hemorrhaging so badly by the time you got to the hospital, it was necessary to remove the whole tube rather than try simply removing the problem, to save your life."

Penny noticed that his face had paled considerably while he talked, and she remembered him sitting with her in the backseat, while she cried pitifully into Leonard's shoulder, unable to take the pain. Amy, stoic in the driver's seat, had figured out the cause almost immediately when Penny groaned out her symptoms, and didn't hesitate to press her foot to the floor in an effort to get them to the hospital faster, even as blood soaked through the towel Penny was sitting on.

"So, basically, I had one bad tube to begin with—"

"Not to begin with," Sheldon interrupted. "Like I said, it was likely caused by your bout of appendicitis at the age of seven."

Penny looked at him with reproof and continued. "One bad tube and then they had to take this one out, right?"

"To save your life," Sheldon confirmed.

"Okay," she said softly. "I guess that makes sense, then. I don't know why the doctor didn't just say that."

Penny thinks about this exchange frequently and wishes there was some way to just tell them all to _back the fuck off and give her a little space_, but she can't think of a nice way to say it.

It's not even that she ever wanted kids, really. Whenever she thought about it growing up, she basically never pictured herself with any. Okay, sometimes she played with baby dolls, and she really loved her nephew. Kids were really cool. And she never was in want of people to take care of. She wasn't even like Bernadette who, for so many years, emphatically _didn't_ want children. It just wasn't a subject that really ever called to Penny, in one way or another.

She thinks maybe she should be sadder about everything, but the most she feels beyond exhaustion and pain is this knot of bitter anger. She knows it's not normal to want to yell at everyone you love, especially when they're doing nice things for you, it's just, well, when you're on your way to the hospital, gasping in pain and trying not to pass out,

_("Wait, wait! Did you feel her hair? It's so light, but I think it's going to be really curly, like yours!"_

_Leonard smiles like the sunshine at her. "I did. It might. Lucky she's a girl—they don't have so much trouble not being tall."_

_Penny laughs and carefully opens the front of her gown; the baby is rooting around listlessly and it takes her a minute to latch on. Leonard reaches out a fingertip and delicately strokes the arch of an eyebrow._

"_I just love her so much," he whispers._

_Penny's heart feels too full and she doesn't quite understand how she's suddenly become such a crier in the past few days when she's always hated crying before. Her throat is hot, swollen with so much love. She never knew loved lived there before, always thought it was in the heart, but really it's in the throat, the breast, the eyes. Even her feet. Even her shaky legs and throbbing groin and sore nipples and tired mind loves this little girl in her arms._

"_Me too," she says, after clearing her throat. "What if we called her—")_

and you're given a chance to see the one thing that could have made you happy forever, and are taunted with the knowledge that it will never, ever happen, it's sometimes hard to cope.

That is the only time the magic ever shows her Leonard.

#

The holidays after Sheldon's Meemaw passed away seemed to bring changes to everyone.

Although he had asked for the whole fireworks, Penny ended up proposing to Leonard simply, and with only a small amount of fanfare, getting down on one knee on Christmas Eve beside the tree, with all of their friends watching.

She had rehearsed it over and over in her mind, trying to find the right words to show him what he meant to her and when she saw the tears glimmering in his eyes, Penny knew that she had—for once— gotten something exactly right.

"Leonard, my whole life I've been waiting for something, or someone, that would make me happy. And every time I seem to get close, I ran away from it. But I don't want to do that with you, not anymore," she said softly, hearing Bernadette gasp in the background (and Howard's less touching, "What the _hell?_") as she got to one knee. "I love you so much. You make me happy. It doesn't seem that complicated after all. Will you marry me?"

Leonard gave a muffled sob and fell to his knees in front of her, kissing her hard on the mouth. He hugged her close. "Oh, god, oh, god," he whispered into her hair. "I love you so much."

Penny pulled away to grin at him as their friends started clapping. "Is that a yes?"

"_Yes!_ Of course!" He stood abruptly. "Wait right there."

Penny watched after him as he skittered out of the room like the floor was hot. Amy and Bernadette were already surrounding her with cries of "That was so romantic!" and "I will, of course, be in this wedding, too, right?"

After assuring both of them that they were going to be co-Maids of Honor, allowing Howard to give her a half hug and thanking Raj for his offer of back issues of Bride magazine, Penny glanced up at Sheldon to find him watching her from a few feet away, blue eyes dark.

She shivered as her world tilted momentarily and then gave him a tentative smile. Sheldon raised one lazy eyebrow as his lips curved sardonically. "I suppose congratulations are in order. Although I've never understood the concept of committing to one partner for the _rest of your life_," he says, and the words sound so serious and forbidding, laughter bubbles up out of Penny's throat as he continues. "However. I do want you and Leonard to be happy. And perhaps this will thin out the constant morning traffic in our apartment. As you know, since receiving tenure, I can more than afford the rent here, so… I lift the proverbial glass to you. Congratulations."

Her unease faded and her world righted itself. She exchanged an amused glance with Amy as Amy muttered under her breath, "He'll understand the concept of marriage soon enough," and Penny thanked him, her voice heavy with irony.

Leonard returned, practically skipping. He held out a small jewelry box that Penny took, glancing at him with a smile. "And how long have you had this waiting in….?"

"Back of my closet," Leonard supplied smugly. "For longer than I care to admit."

She opened it. On a bed of black satin, the ring glittered up at her, a heart-shaped diamond stone with small baguettes leading away from the center. She slipped it on her ring finger, and found it a perfect fit. She held it up to admire it on her hand and pushed the disconnected feeling away.

It was a lovely ring. She didn't know if it was exactly _her_, but it was certainly Leonard, and wasn't the point of having a ring to show that she had decided to belong with another person? And she wanted to be with him, she'd made her choice

_(like Sheldon had made his_)

so it was okay. Better, even; perfect. Her life had finally started falling into place; her degree in theatre was on the horizon and the man she loved had just agreed to marry her. Um, hey, best Christmas present ever, right?

All of this made it easier to forgive a few private tears when Amy told her a week later that Sheldon had finally succumbed (or, well, written out a contract that dictated what was okay and what wasn't—and most of it wasn't, yet) to her feminine wiles, culminating in the "loss of the last vestige of my virginity, bestie, and all of Sheldon's."

Penny listened with one ear, trying not to looked shocked

_(dismayed. Hurt. He wasn't yours to begin with, remember? And that thing about him finally giving in a week after you get engaged to someone else doesn't. mean. anything.)_

and asked, "The last vestige?"

"Well, of course, my hymen was ruptured several years ago due to a horse riding accident, which is fine because it really does make tampons more comfortable—"

Penny held up a hand. "Got it."

"Anyway, my virginity after that was only theoretical." She gave one of her dry chuckles. "Which makes it perfectly fitting that it was taken by a theoretical physicist."

"Wow, Ames. I don't know what to say."

"There's not much _to_ say. Now we're bonded into the sisterhood of sexually active women. We can share stories, tips, naughty suggestions…"

Penny coughed. "Well, sure, there's _that._ But… it was good? Nice, and everything? He didn't get too… Sheldon-y on you?"

"There was a certain amount of germaphobia," Amy recognized, "but I expect that to dissipate in time. God knows, it's only been four years, and we've finally taken the plunge."

"Well, good. I'm glad for you," Penny said.

Amy's voice grew solemn. "I love him, Penny. And I think he loves me too, although he's not the sort to go around saying it."

Penny tried to keep the wistfulness off her face_ (no, that's not right, there was nothing she had to feel wistful __**about**__…) _as she smiled. "I've been pretty sure that's true for a while, now. Congratulations."

And then, after Amy left, those tears _(just a few, and that hardly matters)_, never to be acknowledged again.

It wasn't too hard to move on, despite Amy's insistence on telling her every detail, whether appropriate or welcome or… not. She had a wedding to plan—far, far in advance, as she'd gotten Leonard to agree to a ceremony in the distant future—and, break of all breaks, had one, two, three callbacks for a new sitcom pilot set.

Penny never read anything before like she read that script. She knew her lines, the main characters lines, the extra's lines, what angle the director would probably be shooting from, everything. It was sharply written, a comedy about a couple lawyers who had recently divorced each other, but who owned a small law firm together that specialized in (oh, the irony!) divorce proceedings.

Penny was reading for the part of the main character's best friend, an associate lawyer named Jules, who had a steamy crush on a lawyer from a rival firm. It was like Grey's Anatomy, only shorter, funnier, and with lawyers. (The same amount of sex, though. God, she had it nailed.)

For the first time, she was completely unsurprised when she got the part. Pieces of her life were falling like dominos. Even Sheldon's congratulations seemed sincere this time, served as it was with a home-made plate of cookies with no favor-requests attached.

And then the pilot was picked up. And then her show found a solid audience among viewers (especially women) aged 18-34. And then she was getting stopped on the street, only occasionally at first, but soon with such frequency that she had to start wearing a baseball cap when going out. She took Amy and Bernadette to clubs they could never have gotten into before. She paid back her parents for all of their financial help. She bought Leonard expensive comic books (and, when Sheldon pouted, she bought them for him, too) and sailed comfortably into her new life.

She had just started planning her wedding (Vale, she was thinking, in the winter—she'd always loved the snow) when Bernadette announced her pregnancy. Penny was extremely happy for her and Howard (and Howard was poignantly tender toward Bernadette), but for the first time, Penny wondered if that might not be what life had planned for her.

She talked about it with Leonard, who admitted to wanting children (_"Really, Penny, with parents like mine, how could I __**not**__ be driven to do a better job?")_, but also claimed that it would be okay if they waited. Or if they never had them.

Well. Now they never would.

#

The apartment, for once, seems quiet around Penny as she flips lethargically through the channels. Wandering past an episode of her own show brings the ghost of a smile to her face, but finally she settles on some new reality cooking show—nothing too taxing for her head; not that she's really going to watch it anyway.

Leonard, thank goodness, had to stay late at CalTech (telling her anxiously, like she was going to burst into tears at his absence, even though all she's wanted for over a week is some time to herself.) to finish some research he'd been putting aside since she'd had to go to the hospital.

_("Sheldon is here for anything you need; he'll take care of you if you need to get up," he'd said, glancing doubtfully toward the hallway. "Um, just in case, you have my beeper number. I can make it back in less than ten minutes if I have to.")_

Strict bed rest sucked ass.

So far, she hadn't had to ask Sheldon for anything. At some point, he'd wandered out from his room to work on his laptop at his desk, not bothering even to scold her for her position, stretched out on the couch and completely hogging his spot while she watched television. But after a while an uncomfortable pressing on her bladder makes itself known and although Penny holds out for as long as she can, she finally forces herself to speak up.

"Sheldon?"

His head comes up. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry to bother you. I just. You know, have to go to the bathroom. Kind of really bad."

"You're not bothering me overly. I did, in fact, agree to help when Leonard had to work late. I found myself distressed when you became symptomatic and had to go to the hospital," he says calmly, and then looks surprised when he realizes what he's just admitted to.

Penny is more than surprised; she's downright floored. _Didn't like waiting for you in the place-filled-with-germs _and _Taking you the bathroom will only take a minute away from my super-important work_ is more in line with what she'd expected rather than a declaration of actual feelings of worry for her. She's unaccountably touched that he's even admitted to volunteering to look after her in Leonard's absence. And she also still really has to pee.

"Thanks, sweetie. So, if you could—" Penny gestures, and Sheldon walks over to her and awkwardly kneels by her side. "I'll just brace myself on you and if you could support me on the way, when we get there, I can go in alone."

Sheldon shifts uncomfortably as Penny reaches an arm over his shoulders and then takes a fortifying breath before saying, "Perhaps it would be easier if I simply carried you."

For years now, Penny has successfully been ignoring the pull of—whatever this is. She looks at him evenly for a long moment and finally says, "No, I don't think it would."

A faint stain of pink colors Sheldon's cheeks and he nods mutely as she lifts herself up, leaning heavily on him. His arm steadies her at the waist, hand splayed at her opposite hip to keep her from sagging, and Penny gasps involuntarily as her laparotomy scar burns. They shuffle slowly to the bathroom, where Penny leaves the door unlocked and makes short work of peeing, flushing, and washing her hands.

She glances up at her reflection as she's about to open the door and is shaken by her appearance. Her eyes have dark purple shadows under them, like bruises; her normally sun-kissed skin is sallow and pale from the blood loss

_(the baby loss)_

and her hair hangs, lank and greasy, around her face. But the most shocking thing is her expression. She's known without a doubt, this whole time, that she's been holding it together—that she's bothered by this the way any normal person would be, but definitely not traumatized, definitely not heartbroken. So why does her face look so—so _sad_, so _miserable_? Is this why no one will leave her alone? Why everyone seems so worried?

She contemplates a moment and takes her own deep breath before deciding enough is enough. She's moved on plenty, she can do it again. So what if everything

_(stomach, scar, heart lungs, empty arms, everything.)_

hurts? It's not the first time and won't be the last.

Penny sighs, biting her lip, and then opens the door to find Sheldon waiting patiently right in front of it. He silently slips that long arm around her waist again, his hand warm on her hip through her pajama bottoms, and leads her back to the couch.

After settling her gently in his spot, feet up, he stands to leave and unbidden, Penny reaches out to grab his hand.

"Wait."

Sheldon pauses, looking down at their clasped hands with confusion. 'Do you need something else? A drink? Something to eat?"

Penny wants to say so many things. She wants to ask him to help her wash her hair with the foamy no-wash shampoo the hospital supplied when she was discharged. She wants to ask him why so many bad things seem to happen to her, to them; why are they the ones who have to learn how to manage heartbreak so often? She wants to ask him for a grilled cheese sandwich, or why he doesn't love her, or if he would mind just sitting with her for a few minutes.

His hand tightens on hers briefly

_(kiss, under her jaw. Kiss on her cheek. Corner of her mouth. The scent of him, surrounding her, so clean and masculine. A kiss on each of her eyelids as hot tears slip out from underneath them._

"_I'm so sorry you're hurting. I wish I could express sympathy better; say the right things in the right ways," he murmurs._

"_I know. I hear you anyway," she says, letting him hold) _

and then releases. Sheldon takes a step back and instead of asking any of the questions in her mind, Penny blurts out, "Do you believe in magic?"

His shoulders stiffen. "No."

She immediately feels stupid, but at least he's not laughing at her. "Why not?"

Sheldon swallows convulsively. "Because I possess an IQ that makes it impossible to. Because I believe there is a scientific explanation for everything."

"Then explain… Explain—" Penny falters helplessly. What if she's wrong? What if he's _never_ seen it? And why now, after everything in her life has gotten to where it should be, is she even trying to discover why things aren't the way she still sometimes sees them?

Sheldon sits in Leonard's chair and places his hands on his knees. He measures her for a moment and then nods briefly. "Penny. Shakespeare once wrote, 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' This means, obviously, that some things just cannot be quantified precisely. Whether that's true or we just haven't reached our full scientific potential, I _do_ think that everything has an answer."

Penny nods, encouraged by the fact that he isn't smirking at her and giving her his version of a backhanded insult (which is really just a plain 'ole insult.). "Like—like your comic books?" she poses tentatively. "Why can you believe in superheroes, then, but not something… magical?"

"Because theoretical physics, if not the proven sciences, support the idea that humans can be capable of great accomplishments. They also support the evolution of the species into something other, stronger and more capable. There's no reason to assume that can't involve invisibility, time travel, or human flight, just to name a few. Even… clairvoyance, telepathy, and the more obviously deceitful 'psychic powers.'"

Penny sighs, and settles deeper into the couch, watching as Sheldon leans back into the chair. Just as she's about to open her mouth again, he continues.

"Moreover… I subscribe to the multi universe theory, or the many-worlds interpretation, if you prefer. I base a large part of my work on it," he says and for a moment he seems to flounder, unsure how to proceed.

"Like when Spock had the beard and everyone was evil on the first show," Penny supplies, and is proud of herself for no longer being weirded out that she knows this kind of stuff.

Sheldon raises his eyebrows and his lips curl up in approval. "Indeed. The theory asserts the objective reality of the universal wave function and denies the actuality of wave function collapse. Many-worlds implies that all possible alternative histories and futures are real."

"Which means?" Penny is grasping, feeling as though she's on the verge of something important, and can't quite follow. It doesn't help that Sheldon is leaning forward seriously now, piercing her with his eyes as though trying to get something urgent through to her.

"Essentially, it means that every time we make a choice, be it small or large, to put on our shoes five minutes early or to eat Thai instead of pizza, reality splits off into something different. In each of these worlds, you carry on, and your life is very similar, or completely different. You've died young, died at age 97, won a Nobel prize at 28 or 37, never been born or—"

"Or?"

"Or never had children," he finally says gently, clearing his throat. "And each of these realities is always happening. Every day. Somewhere, right now, you and I are not talking about this because you are uninterested in the subject, or we've never met, or you didn't make it to the hospital on time."

"A clown made of candy?" Penny ventures, and Sheldon gives her what passes as—for him—a proud smile.

"Exactly."

"So this would mean that every choice I've ever made has lead me—this Penny, this time—to where I am. And other Penny's might have made other choices. To not come to LA, or even not be an actress?" Sheldon is nodding and she continues, more to herself than to him. "In some of them, I might have kids, even lots of them, right? Like a little girl with curly hair? Or I might even—be _with_ somebody else, if I had made different choices, or if Leonard had, or if…"

Sheldon freezes and Penny's throat dries up as she gazes at him.

"Everything that happens, as well as everything that doesn't happen, leads us to exactly where we are. In every reality," Sheldon says finally, breaking the long silence.

"What you said about the other stuff—telepathy, and psychic-y stuff…"

"Balderdash," Sheldon says with a funny little quirk of his lips. "Although I would never rule out the possibility of someone evolving to the point where they were able to recognize energy better than other humans. Everyone gives off energy, a personal mark if you will. People may eventually become more recognizing of it, as though it were an allergy, and it was a really strong odor they couldn't ignore. And I'm sure some people will find themselves sensitive to another person sneezing in front of them."

"Romantic," Penny mumbles dryly and Sheldon chuffs out his absurd laugh.

"It is, isn't it?" he agrees, and looks at her closely.

She feels panicked and strangely touched. Uncertain whether moving will create another universe, wanting to go back and erase all of them. At the same time, she feels reassured by the idea that for every world she's understood pain, there's another one where everything has been beautiful.

"I guess it is," she says softly. Wants to say more, but doesn't, although it doesn't matter. Sheldon seems to hear her anyway.

They won't speak of it again for a long time.

#

*Part of the many-world theory was taken directly from wikepedia. Also, I got a pretty serious flame about this story—someone who was incredibly mad that I had the talent of neither Chuck Lorre or Bill Prady and I just wanted to extend my most sincere apologies. I really wish I had their talent too. LOL. Unfortunately, all I'm able to do at this point is "pilfer these characters names for my abysmal story." (Um, Chuck and Bill? Please don't sue me for doing that…)

Enjoy! (Or don't. Your choice. )


	5. Not As Easy As You Think

Just after Sheldon's 35th birthday, he decides to, as he explains, "bend to societal, parental and relationship pressures," and ask Amy to marry him.

He tells Penny first, purely out of convenience and maybe a little boredom, as Amy has yet to pick him up so they can embark on their monthly date night, and he needs to procure "an idea; something female approved in the way of sparkling beverages or fat-laden pastry, as the standards dictate," and wants Penny's advice on what would be good.

She's vaguely pissed, but at this point, what can she expect? Sheldon doesn't understand the subtlety of romance, or even how romantic proposals are supposed to play out. He works best off a script, which if fine—if you're trying a _little_. She places her palm on his shoulder, and to his credit, he no longer flinches at her touch.

"Sweetie, when did you decide this?"

"Amy has brought it up several times over the past two years, with increasing urgency. As you have pointed out, my mother would not be wholly accepting of a pregnancy out of wedlock and Amy, as it turns out, is interested in becoming a mother for reasons besides our chances of creating genius offspring. She's turning 32 this year, and after the age of 35, her fertility rate is likely to drop by—"

Penny rolls her eyes, secure in her knowledge that he won't notice or care even if he did. "Right. But when did you decide this?"

"Well, right before I asked you what might be an appropriate pastry on which to have "Will You Marry Me," written out on it," he says innocently. "I have been thinking about it, and with more frequency each time Amy brings up the subject."

"So you do want to marry her?" Penny poses softly. Sheldon looks at her, eyes clear, and nods.

"I find the idea to be not at all unpleasant. Amy is a good girlfriend and we've been together for nearly seven years. We have a life together that will transition with ease. Besides which," he says simple, "I love her."

Finally, Penny smiles. "Okay, then. She'll be thrilled. But can I make a couple of suggestions?"

"Well, that's why I _asked_ you," Sheldon mutters irritably, and her smile becomes a grin.

"Do you have a ring yet?"

"No."

"It might be a good idea to buy the ring before you propose. It's not required, but it tends to be standard," she explains. "Also, it doesn't necessarily need to be smarmy. It should feel like something Amy will like, and feel like who you are. Will she like getting engaged? Yeah, totally, no matter how you do it. Can you make it more personalized than champagne and cake over dinner at the Cheesecake Factory? Of course you can."

"All right," Sheldon nods thoughtfully. "I'll bow to your experience. I'll meet you at the studio tomorrow afternoon. Please call me when you're done shooting and make sure to leave my name at the gate this time; being accused of "stalking a hot actress" is humiliating for a man of my stature."

Penny is alternately amused and confused. "Yeah, sorry about that. I did tell you that the guard asked me to apologize for that pat down, right?"

"Nevertheless," Sheldon says stiffly.

"All right, all right. Wait, why are you meeting me?"

"You're taking me ring shopping."

Penny opens her mouth silently and clicks it shut as Amy knocks on the door. "Fine, fine. I'll call you when I'm done," she mutters, and Sheldon goes to answer the door.

This is how she finds herself in a boutique jewelry store, sliding her eyes over brightly lit cases filled with sparkling gemstones. Out of deference to her celebrity, they've agreed to close the doors for an hour, to hopefully forestall an article coming out in the Globe about how she's about to leave Leonard for a tall and gangly man who has already proposed to her.

And really, if she leaves him, Sheldon won't be why, she thinks, and is immediately ashamed.

Things have just been so tense between them since her pregnancy, and she knows that so much of it is because of her. She can't let go or something, or maybe she's trying too hard to move on from it. Whatever it is, it creates a disharmony that hasn't been there in such a long time. Their wedding date has been postponed for over a year now—work is a good excuse-and she just can't bring herself to pick a new one.

But Leonard has been distant too, and she knows he's more devastated about the idea of never having natural children than he's let on. Sometimes, even when she's trying hard, he takes little nips at her, backhanded jokes that hurt her feelings, about her education, or intelligence, or even her current success. It seems like he doesn't trust her to make him happy anymore, and that distrust makes her feel like she can't.

She finds herself engaging in the same kind of behavior, much to her embarrassment. Talking about how cool her friends at work are, how tall a recurring character is, and pausing their dvr in the middle of a kissing scene with him so that she can 'critique' her work.

It's not all bad; sometimes, she's very happy with him, and she can feel how much he loves her in return. But it's never _simple_ anymore, and it never feels _content_.

Sheldon repeats her name and she feels her cheeks color as she realizes she hasn't been paying any attention to his conversation with the salesman. "Sorry," she says, hurriedly tapping her fingernail against the glass as an excuse over a random twinkling pair of diamond earrings, each the size of a fat raisin. "I love these. I'll take them before I go."

The salesman smiles broadly. "Yes, miss."

She heads over to where the two of them are standing over a display of rings. "You and Amy share a ring size, correct?" Sheldon checks briefly. The salesman has already begun pulling out several rings and laying them on a small velvet blanket.

Penny hesitates. While it's true that she's loaned Amy jewelry from time to time when they go out, and that they share a ring size, and it's also true that Penny is _really, really_ happy for her best friends, she's not sure what kind of line this will cross.

Because sometimes, when she's feeling lonely laying next to Leonard at night, or when an unflattering story has come out with quotes from her middle-school best friend, Penny reminds herself that there's more to the universe than this. She lets herself remember, just for a few, comforting moments, that somewhere out there, she loves someone who has swept her away with shocking heat and unexpected tenderness.

She's done well, over the last year and a half, to not dwell on it. It's good enough to know what she feels in her gut, what she feels to be true. It helps that Sheldon is the one who finally made her understand, and so she feels he knows it too, and that she's not alone in this universe; and maybe, not in many of them.

But trying on Amy's ring seems almost… disrespectful of the relationships she's sworn to herself that she would protect. Only, the salesman and Sheldon are now looking at her expectantly, and she's not sure how to say no.

"Do you really think that's a good idea," she finally offers, timidly.

"Yes," Sheldon says, looking puzzled. "How else am I going to accurately measure a ring against the size of Amy's finger and still present it to her as a surprise?"

"I just." Penny looks at him, seriously. "Sheldon, do you really think it's a good idea?"

His pupils flare; he gets it then, she sees. "Oh." He seems to be thinking of something for a long moment, hand resting lightly on the counter, eyes on her face. "…Yes. I'd like it if you could try these on, please."

His voice is quiet, deeper than usual, and measured, and yet it wraps her in a feeling of intimacy she's avoided for quite a while. Her hand flutters for a moment, near her stomach. Penny slowly slides her engagement ring off, and holds her left hand out to him.

Sheldon takes a deep breath, releases it. Briskly, he picks up her hand and slips on the first ring, and Penny stares at it thoughtfully. It's a square-shaped diamond solitaire, a little over a carat, set in a thick white-gold band. She glances at Sheldon.

"Um. I think the important thing is to find something you think she'll like."

Sheldon raises his eyebrows. "As Amy is fond of—to use your vernacular—'bling,' are you implying that this is too sedate for her tastes?"

"It's beautiful," Penny says tactfully, "but yeah. Whenever she wears jewelry, she really goes for stuff that stands out. I think we both know she's not as… tame as she seems sometimes."

A smile flickers around Sheldon's mouth at that and he picks up another, consisting of a round center ruby surrounded by tiny diamonds. He slides it on her finger and Penny considers for a moment. "This one isn't bad. I'm not sure if she likes rubies, but… It's a maybe, don't you think?"

She removes it and sets it aside as Sheldon plucks a third off the spread that has an oddly-shaped, maybe octagonal, center yellow diamond of about a carat, and is encircled with orange citrines in a wide yellow-gold setting. The citrines look like they're mini-starbursts, or sunrays maybe and as the ring slides over her knuckle, almost uncomfortably tight, Penny gets that swooping feeling again and she looks up into Sheldon's eyes.

He seems startled; his lips tremble momentarily as he continues to hold her hand gently, like it's a wounded bird and

_(She feels strangely shy, which is weird because sex with him has always been so astounding, even from the start. Their chemistry was off the charts from their first time, but for some reason, tonight…_

_Sheldon slides the straps of her white negligee off her shoulders and leans into her, exhaling near her ear. His breath is warm, and it adds a shiver to her skin, making her feel nicely symmetrical, shivering inside and out. _

"_I love this," he murmurs, running a hand down the satin, brushing his fingers over the curve of her bottom before lightly cupping it. She feels his erection twitch against her, through the material, and she smiles. _

"_I know we're not very traditional," she says, and is pleased when he chuckles._

"_The waiting is probably the first traditional thing we've done," he acknowledges._

"_I wanted it to be special. And it wasn't really that long, two months."_

"_It seemed long to me," he protests quietly._

_Penny's hand finds him, circles him, squeezing him lightly. He doesn't bother to muffle a soft groan._

"_It seems longer to me now," she says with a wicked little giggle._

_Sheldon purses his lips at her in that way that he does when he disapproves of something, but she knows it's all for show. He feels hot in her hand and she slides the negligee down past her breasts, off her hips, letting it pool around her feet elegantly before stepping out of it. She'd loved it when she bought it, so pretty, so right for a wedding night, and now all she wants is nothing between them._

_They lay on the bed together and she melts against him as he kisses her, warm and wet and long. His hands skim over her breasts, palming her nipples until they ache, before sliding down to the apex at her thighs, rubbing her clitoris gently/roughly the way she likes with his knuckle as he slides one long finger into her, and then two._

_Penny whimpers, breathless. Her hand works slowly up and down the length of him, and she feels satisfied as she strokes her thumb over the swollen tip and feels moisture there. She looks down, sees her hand moving over him and gets a thrill as she sees the yellow diamond glimmer dully as it catches candlelight. Sheldon picks up the movement of his hand, deepening his kisses and Penny arches against him, almost panicked with desire as her release approaches. _

"_I need you now," she whispers. "Please."_

"_Yes," Sheldon mumbles and she loves times like this, who knew, when he's so overcome with lust that he loses all words. "Yes."_

_She opens her legs wider and Sheldon arranges himself between them, reaching down to place himself against her opening. _

_It's been a while; there's a delicious sense of stretching, an ache. But he fits perfectly, he always has. He holds himself still for a moment upon entering her, and she moves restlessly against him, putting the soles of her feet on the backs of his thighs._

_Sheldon props himself on his elbows, arms close to her face, and brushes her hair back to make sure she's paying attention. It's difficult; he feels so good, and it's been so long, but she gamely takes a breath and meets his eyes, focusing on his face._

"_Penny," he says. "I love)_

suddenly the air in the room is charged with tension, not Sheldon's normal tension; perhaps of another kind, that Amy has only previously seen. They're standing too close together and it seems like only seconds _(a lifetime_) has passed, but how did they drift so near to one another that she can smell his soap?

His eyes are intense, he's swallowing convulsively and breathing a little faster too. Penny takes stock of herself; she feels a flush on her neck and face, her heart is hammering and she can feel her pulse throb between her legs. A delicate glance down between them tells her that she's not the only one affected by what just happened, but it also seems to break the spell that was holding them frozen.

He releases her and steps away and she looks, sideways, at the salesman. He's stepped back, away from the counter, and seems flummoxed at whatever that was he silently witnessed. Her face flames hotter and she wrenches the ring off her finger, quickly placing it on the counter and pushing it away from her.

"I—I—" she stammers, and then gulps in more air, "I don't think that one's her."

Sheldon glances up; his face is strangely grim. "No. It wasn't Amy."

"Any of these are good," Penny says, desperate now to get away. "I think she'll like the ruby. Or the first one. Or, look, that one is actually really good!" she says, pointing to a ring that has three larger diamonds set in a row, with smaller baguettes leading away from the center.

The salesman (John, she finally notices) seems unsure of how to proceed. "Should I ring that one up then, sir?"

"I need to think about it," Sheldon clips out, almost angrily, and Penny spares him an alarmed look.

"Miss? What about your earrings?"

"Yes, yes. Go ahead and ring those up," she says hurriedly, and he seems relieved.

A few minutes later, they're out on the street again in the burning sun. As they're about to get into her car, she stops and looks at him over the top of it.

"Sheldon?"

He sighs and glances at her warily. "Not now, Penny."

So she shuts up and drives him home.

#

The end comes slowly with Leonard, and far too quick.

Penny would like to blame it on Sheldon, like to blame it on the fact that it's been almost two months since she took him ring shopping, and still hasn't heard anything about an engagement, but she can't. If that's part of it, it's a small part because if Penny is anything, it's stubborn, and loyal. She made up the decision to marry Leonard, and it's harder to quit than she thought—and she never thought it would be easy.

It's a million different things, like how she always thought that if she got famous, she'd be a press-hog, but it turns out she's the semi-reclusive type, and Leonard loves introducing her as his fiancée in a way it never seemed he did before she was a well-known television actress.

It's not like she can't understand that; there's a certain prestige that comes with being a well-known actress on a well-watched show that doesn't come with occasionally getting to serve someone kinda famous a slice of cheesecake.

But it still manages to hurt her feelings, even though part of her suspects she's looking for more reasons to be unhappy; as if the little things she's accumulated aren't enough of a reason to back away.

Their fighting has gotten tired, and vaguely mean. She hates the echoes of his mother she can hear in his voice when he gets pompous on her, hates how she feels like a spoiled teenager when she's mad, although she makes a concentrated effort not to act like one.

Leonard has changed into someone she knows and doesn't know; there are all of these new angles to him

_(Positive, negative, identifying… She remembers some math and science, just maybe not a lot, and it seems like that's one of the things he needs now that she's not the shiny happy Penny she used to be.)_

that she doesn't recognize and she wants _so badly_ to understand him the way she used to, to be a part of him the way she used to; for them to be an _us_ the way they used to that it breaks her heart more than a little.

But she's changed into someone new too, she admits to herself with reluctance. She knows she brings something to the group, but is no longer sure of what; she's gotten a little less optimistic, a little less bubbly. Her jokes have taken on a sharp-edged sort of humor and she sometimes she has to work hard at not allowing it to become cutting. Her seriousness is visible in around the eyes, in the gestures of her hands and the tension with which she holds her neck.

She trusts herself more, and has acclimatized herself to heartbreak; has learned how to walk through that minefield with only a few missing limbs to show for it. It's part of growing up, she reasons sadly, when she lets herself think about it at all, especially after experiencing some of the things she has. Sometimes she misses her general lightness of being, but mostly she just knows that you can never go back, and she's content with who she's turned into. She still loves her friends, loves her life… she's just—altered herself. And that's okay. Or it should be.

The ironic thing is, she feels like it might be okay with Leonard—maybe not right away, but eventually—if one night he climbed into bed next to her, wrapped her up close, and said he was sorry. Or if she said she was sorry. Or if either of them just stopped feeling the goddamned need to apologize so often that it made them both furious.

But he isn't, and she can't and so, after another fight about nothing, really, where Leonard is mad because she's working late again and she turns it around to accuse him of thinking his career is more important than hers, and Leonard has stalked off, slamming the door to the bedroom, Penny finds herself sitting motionless on the couch, trying to control her heart, which feels like it's about to explode.

She feels like crying, but won't let herself, so instead she takes a couple of deep breaths and clutches the cushion beneath her with tight fingers as she works it out in her mind.

She loves him. And it's going to be okay, she knows, even though it hurts like this. Because somewhere out there, she still loves him like she used to; some Penny is crazy in love with Leonard, and they make love and argue like grownups and cuddle in bed and make plans and laugh _(oh, God, she misses laughing with him)_, and other Penny's are probably even more nuts about him, other Penny's are smarter or more dedicated or not as torn or cynical. Somewhere out there, Leonard is happy, and Penny has made him happy, or someone else has.

She sighs heavily, bites her lip, and slides her ring off with shaking hands. Her heart is still pounding and her head is starting to ache from holding back tears, but she walks over to their bedroom and opens the door to find him sitting, stiff and angry, on their bed.

Penny sits down next to him.

"I never wanted it to be like this between us," she says softly, and he twitches his head in her direction. She wants to just get it out, be done with it, so it will be over and she can stop trying to figure out how to get through these words that hurt so much. "I'm not making you happy, and I'm not happy, and maybe it's because of the baby or maybe it's because there will never be a baby, or maybe we've just grown apart in the way that makes it impossible for us to grow together again as a couple, but I _hate missing you_, all the time, when you're right in front of me. You've been my best friend for so long that I haven't done this because I'm afraid of losing you.

"But we're losing each other anyway. I don't know what your issues with me are except for the ones I'm making up in my head, but it doesn't really matter anymore. I'd rather stop now than stop when we hate each other. _God, Leonard_, I don't ever want to hate you. And I think it would make me want to die if you hated me. So, here."

She puts the ring in his hand and folds his fingers over it, and finally, _finally_, he looks up at her, his sweet brown eyes liquid with pain.

"I don't want to lose you, either," he whispers unsteadily. "This is _so fucked up._ Why can't we just-?"

"Because we can't," Penny says. "Because we tried, and it doesn't work. Maybe if things had been different—but I guess they were, somewhere…"

Leonard is nodding in time with her words. "I wanted to help you stop hurting, and then it seemed like I was what was hurting you, and then it all got so big and now… Now it's over, isn't it?"

"Yes," she says simply. "Now we stay away from each other for a little while, and then try, _really try_ to see if we can be in each other's lives again. Because I'm always going to need you. Just not in the way you need someone you're going to marry."

Leonard leans sideways, pressing his shoulder to hers, and she feels her breath leave her like a weight, like a heavy burden she's been carrying. She leans against him for a count of ten and then stands up.

Leonard sits quietly, clutching the ring, while she packs a couple of bags. "I'll stay at the Four Seasons until I can find a new place," she says.

His head bobs. "Okay. Call me when you're ready."

"You, too."

Penny turns to leave and stops as she hears him stand up behind her. "Penny."

"Yeah?"

"I've been waiting for us not to work out for a long time. Probably since the beginning. So it's not you. I mean, this is my fault, too, a lot of it. But, I mean. I want you to know. I've loved you so much."

Penny chokes on a small sob and walks over to hug him. It's tight, and awkward with her bags, and more sad than she can remember a hug being that didn't involve death

_(even though this one does, in a way…)_

and after a moment, she pulls back. "I've loved you too. Everywhere."

#

Penny has settled into her suite (if falling face down on the plush comforter of the king-sized bed and groaning into the mattress can constitute as settling) when her cell phone starts buzzing. She ignores it for a good twenty minutes until the fifth buzz before wearing pulling it out of her pocket.

Text messages, from Amy, all with increasing urgency.

_I tried you at your apartment and Leonard said you were going to the Four Seasons. Call me when you get this._

_I'm on my way to the Four Seasons._

_I need to talk to you about something. Call me when you get this._

_Are you okay? Please call me when you get this._

_I'm in the lobby of the Four Seasons, but they won't tell me your room number. Can you please call me with it?_

Briefly, Penny entertains the idea of pretending that she'd shut off her phone for the night and just waiting until Amy goes home, but for all she knows, Amy will wait all night out of concern, so Penny texts her suite number and waits.

A few minutes later Amy knocks on the door and Penny heaves herself off the bed, kicking off her shoes as she goes to answer it.

Amy stands in the hallway, her face stark, and Penny pauses, confused, before opening the door to allow Amy access.

"I'm really okay. Or, you know, I will be eventually. You didn't have to come all the way down here."

Amy looks at her strangely. "I needed to talk to you."

"Oh." Penny is stumped. "This isn't about how Leonard and I broke up?"

"_You and Leonard broke up?"_

"Um, yeah. Tonight. That's why I'm here. He didn't say?"

"No. I assumed you came to stay here for some reason regarding early morning shoots and traffic."

Penny starts to feel uneasy, and she silently ushers Amy over to the sofa; sits down next to her. "Okay… What's going on, then?"

Amy laughs like cut glass and Penny winces. Amy has been a lot of things in the history of their friendship; stoic, strange, inappropriate, loyal, innocent, oddly wise. But Penny has never heard that jagged tone in her voice before, and now she's really worried.

"Sheldon broke up with me tonight," Amy finally says baldly, after her laughter has wound down. "So I suppose we have yet more in common."

Penny is appalled; for a second she wonders if he found out she broke up with Leonard and breaking up with Amy was his response. She's immediately irritated with herself because she knows each of them too well, and that kind of thinking gives no credit to anyone involved. Sheldon, though he pretends not to be, is deeper than that, and he genuinely cares about Amy—she wasn't someone he was just waiting around with for Penny to be free.

Still, she can't wrap her mind around it, both of them ending their relationships on the same night and being unaware of the other.

She takes a deep breath and grips Amy's hand tightly. "Okay. What happened? What kind of reason did he give?"

"He said that he wanted us to return to our former paradigm and that our intimacy was too distracting for him at this time, as he's gotten off track in his work toward winning the Nobel Prize."

"What a _dick_ thing to say," Penny mutters.

"No, no," Amy says, shaking her head roughly. "I understand that part, at least. He has been very dutiful about fulfilling his part of the relationship agreement, and I can even see how his involvement on such an intimate and personal level can distract him from his work. I do tend to call him frequently at the office, and especially when he's working late, which can pull him out of whatever he's doing… But I offered to stop doing that."

"And what did he say?"

"He told me that he needs to focus solely on his work for the time being and when I asked him how long a break he wanted to take from us, he said indefinite because though he loved me—" here Amy's voice breaks, and her eyes fill with tears—"which is the first time he's really said that, he couldn't give me the things I wanted."

"But you want him," Penny points out, bewildered at this turn of events, unsure what to say to make things better.

"That's what I said. He pointed out that I have mentioned marriage, and children, and discussed our future at length, and he is not going to be ready for that for a long time and that he wants me to be with someone whose attention won't be so split, someone who wants to and can devote all of themselves to me, because that's what I deserve."

"That _is_ what you deserve," Penny says softly, squeezing Amy's hand tighter.

"Yes, I know that. Ironically, it was Sheldon who gave me any sense that I might thrive in a relationship setting. And I do understand that if I am able to handle his quirks, my patience for your more standard brilliant scientist will be off the charts," Amy says, logical to the bone. "And, he was trying so hard to be gentle with me, it was impossible not to take his intent seriously. As you know, Sheldon rarely bothers with conversational tenderness, so it's hard to disregard."

_(Again, that flicker, that little glow of warmth that Penny pushes away immediately because it feels so good and because she must. But, tenderness. She knows how hard it can be for him, and also knows how he can excel at it like at anything he decides to do right..)_

"So… What does this mean?"

"Well, he said that our group paradigm has become just as distracting, so he'll be distancing himself from everyone as he follows his research. Obviously, he'll still see Raj and Leonard at work, but now that he has his own apartment, he sees no reason to socialize further. And he said that he doesn't want me to wait for him to be done; that I should try to find someone who can give me everything that Sheldon can't," Amy adds, sounding perplexed and sad.

"Are you okay?"

"No," Amy says, "But to borrow your overly-hopeful declaration, I will be. I just…"

"What?"

"I thought he loved me."

"He did," Penny says quietly. "He even…" She hesitates here, suddenly positive she should never tell Amy about Sheldon's almost-proposal. "He even told me so, once."

Amy's eyes are red-rimmed. "Can I stay here with you tonight?"

"Sure." Penny pats her hand and heads over to the mini-bar. "Let's get smashed like we used to. Or, at least like I did. Old-fashioned slumber party."

"Cookie-dough and lesbianism?"

"Movies and alcohol," Penny corrects. "…And maybe some cookie dough, later."

"Thank you, Penny."

"You're welcome, sweetie."

#

The following morning, after Amy has gone off to work, Penny picks up her cell phone. Without letting herself debate for too long, she hits speed dial 3.

Sheldon picks up on the second ring. "Dr. Sheldon Cooper."

"Sheldon!"

He pauses. "I gather from that irate tone in your voice that Amy has told you of our separation."

"I thought you were going to marry her!" Penny says agitatedly.

"I was. However, I gave her several irrefutable reasons why that would not be wise in the foreseeable future," he explains calmly. "Amy will eventually benefit from this new arrangement and although I will miss her, I really do need to focus on my work. I am not where I thought I would be in this stage of my career, so some things need to change. I will also be distancing myself from the majority of group activities outside of work for the foreseeable future."

"Sheldon…"

"Yes?"

Penny wants to tell him about Leonard; wants to ask if she can see him, wants to get his take on what has happened between them last night, so far apart an yet experiencing the same thing. She wants to be inside his head for just a minute, even though she knows she would understand absolutely nothing she saw there.

"I hope you're doing the right thing for you guys," she says instead.

"I do believe I am." He pauses. "Amy deserves someone far better able to keep his attention rooted on her."

Penny sucks in a painful breath; her eyes prick. "Okay. Um, call me if you need anything, okay?"

"Thank you, although I highly doubt I will need to. But I do appreciate the offer."

They say their goodbyes and Penny spends a minute staring at her phone as though it will offer her some of the answers she so desperately wants. After a minute she drops it on the nightstand and starts getting ready for her day with an odd feeling, like something coming undone.

Later, she will often wish that she knew then that she would only rarely see Sheldon again for the next three years.


	6. What Happens When

Chapter Six:

What Happens When

It's two days before Penny's 34th birthday when she receives the invitation.

Shooting seemed to take forever, and she's longing for nothing more than a hot bath and a glass of wine (and, okay, maybe one of those small sample boxes of expensive chocolates she keeps getting as favors at parties) before rolling into bed and doing absolutely nothing for the next three days she's lucked into getting off.

She gathers her little bundle of mail that her personal assistant Marcy has set aside for her (her fan mail usually gets routed elsewhere at this point, unless she has some free time and specifically asks for some that she can respond to herself) lets her hair down and heads for the bathroom.

There's an uncorked bottle of merlot on the counter-Penny reminds herself that it's past due to give the girl a raise—and an empty glass. A couple of plush towels are waiting on the towel rack and Penny starts the water at hot before taking a quick detour to grab that box of chocolates and some raspberry-almond bubble bath lurking under her sink.

_(And really it's not worth mentioning, especially not to herself, that the scent always makes her think of someone; it's one of those smells she became addicted to after having been gifted lavishly once-upon-a-time with various bath salts, oils and lotions. She only still buys a few in particular anymore, raspberry and orange and coconut, but they always make her remember…)_

Penny steps out of her clothes and leaves them in a heap on the floor. She takes her cell out of her pocket and places it on the rim of the tub with her other items (in case she gets bored, she can always call someone) before turning off the water and slipping into the bath.

The water's hot, almost too hot. A light steam rises from the thick foam, and Penny has to hold her breath while her skin adjusts. Sweat breaks out on her face as she leans her head back against her bath pillow and pours a large glass of wine before taking a long, slow draw from it.

After a few minutes, she picks up the mail. Penny makes no secret about how much she's always loved birthday cards (which is really a kind way of putting it. Usually her friends are met with a throated growl something along the lines of "If you forget to send me a card, branded cows will feel sympathetic for you this year," about a month before her birthday and that's that.), so she's been enthusiastic for her mail every day this week.

Several of them are cards, that much is obvious, but as she flips through them she stills at one marginally wider and thicker than the others, on a much higher quality of paper. It's thick and creamy and has her name on the front in gold lettering. She slips her nail underneath the back flap and carefully opens it, pulling out what turns out not to be a card after all, but an invitation.

Feeling blank, she reads it twice before anything starts to sink in. On her third reading, she picks up her glass of wine and drains it, tossing everything onto the floor before picking up her cell.

It's been almost six months since she's seen him at the celebration dinner at Leonard's in June_ (nine long months before that, four before that, six again before that and on and on, not that she's counting.)_, but he's remained on her speed dial for over a decade and she calls him first. When his tinny voicemail picks up _("You have reached the voicemail of Dr. Sheldon Cooper. I am otherwise more importantly engaged. Please leave a message and if it is convenient, I will call you back when I can." Beep.) _Penny hangs up in frustration and dials Leonard instead.

Alexis picks up, her voice warm. "Hey, Penny! What's up?"

"Hi, Lex. Listen, is Leonard around?"

"Yeah, sure. Just a sec."

Penny feels some relief at their easy back-and-forth. When Leonard first met Lexie, a few months after he and Penny broke up, Penny was worried that she would be in for another Priya-type situation; having to stay away from Leonard wasn't in her life plans, so her joy at meeting Lexie and learning that she was just as open-hearted and optimistic, just as good natured and warm and accepting as Leonard was made her happy. Not only was she in no danger of losing her friend, she managed to find a new one.

(_And those moments, where she could have—maybe should have—felt pain, like when he proposed to Lexie, or watching Leonard promise to love another woman forever, or even, God, when he called her to delicately announce that Lexie was pregnant, these moments only brought her joy anymore because she didn't want anyone to wait for their happiness, and acknowledging that Leonard was one of the most important people in her life whom she wanted nothing but the best for was the best thing she could have done to finally let herself let him go…) _

There's a whispered shuffle and then Leonard's voice comes over the line. "I sent a card, I swear. Lexie too. Two days ago. You should have gotten them already. Besides, it's not your birthday yet, so—"

Penny laughs and relaxes a little. "Seriously, no. I got something else today, an invitation."

"Oh!" Leonard's voice warms up. "Yeah, he asked me to promise not to tell anyone until they got invitations."

"So it's for real?"

"It's for real," he confirms.

"Are you going?"

"Lexie can't fly this month or next. The baby," he points out. "Not that Sheldon thinks that should stop me, but you know him."

"Not very well, anymore," Penny mutters, unsure how she can feel so delighted and irritated at the same time. "I mean, he never picks up when I call. I know you see him all the time, but he's always mysteriously gone from events when I'm going. I guess this is what he's been going for the past few years, but it kind of feels like he was deliberately shutting me out, so I'm not sure why he would bother to put me on the invitation list now."

"Yes, you do," Leonard says so kindly it gives Penny pause.

"…What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean, Penny." _(Yes, yes she does, even though she's been trying for so long not to.) _"But I've already talked about this at length with Sheldon. Don't make me explain this to you too. You're already so much smarter than he is with things like this."

"I-I have to go," Penny says, and her voice sounds suspiciously tight. "I'll talk to you later. Tell Lex we're still on for Friday."

"Okay."

They hang up, and Penny sits for a minute amidst her dissolving bubbles while she tries to collect her thoughts, tries to decipher just what Leonard knows, just what he was advising her to do. She's pretty sure that life if never as simple as that.

After a moment, she dials Amy, who picks up on the first ring. "Hey, Bestie!"

"Hey, Ames."

"I sent my card yesterday," Amy promises quickly. "It should arrive no later than your birthday."

"Thanks. But that's not why I'm calling…"

"I've also confirmed my travel arrangements in February, after the study I'm working on runs its course; I'm taking two weeks in a row off, during your shooting hiatus, so we'll be able to paint the town red."

Penny bites her lip. "I think the town is red enough, but I'm glad you're coming—"

"I will, of course, be staying in your guest room."

"Yeah."

"All right, then. Listen, I'm in the middle of timing a group of ferrets to see how fast they can complete a series of leaps through hoops on fire and how much fear and adrenaline their brain secrete after the course is run, so can I call you back later?"

"Wait!" Penny rolls her eyes. "I actually called for a reason!"

"Yes?"

"I got an invitation from Sheldon today—well, for Sheldon today—and I needed to talk to you about it."

"Oh, yes, I got that a few days ago," Amy says matter-of-factly. "I'm very proud of him."

"You got one too? Did you know it was coming? So, wait, are you going?" Penny asks in rapid succession, getting more confused by the second.

"Yes, I did. I only knew a few days prior to receiving the invitation, and Sheldon asked me not to advertise it until all of the invitations had been received, which I considered a reasonable request, although I did think about letting you in on it for the sake of a little sisterly gossip. But he specifically mentioned not telling you, and I found it more difficult to go back on my word than I thought it might be," Amy sighs.

"And, no, I unfortunately won't be attending. While Robert seems to be marginally comfortable with me maintaining a skype friendship with Sheldon, the idea of spending too much time in his presence, especially after achieving the goal for which he broke up with me, seems to bother him. I do find it satisfying in a strange way to be able to provoke a more potent sort of jealousy than Sheldon ever showed, not that I would ever do so on purpose," she confesses.

"No, I know you wouldn't," Penny mumbles, and then sits upright again as something occurs to her. "Wait a minute—you and Sheldon are skyping again? I thought it was just occasional emails."

"We've been in pretty regular contact for the past few months. We speak a few times a week. It's a welcome diversion when I have free time and when Robert is at the lab."

"…What do you guys talk about?"

"Oh, you know." Amy's voice becomes strangely vague and unhelpful. "His work, once he was fairly certain he was onto something. He has plans to resuscitate Fun With Flags. Other things. Like that."

"Mmm." Penny narrows her eyes, knowing that if Amy was sitting in front of her, she'd get the full story, and considering for a moment just booking a red-eye flight to New York to get the scoop in a few hours.

"But you should, by all means, go," Amy says, and there it is again, that something in her voice, something so much like Leonard's, an encouragement, a softness, that it makes Penny hesitate. Amy finishes, "I'm sure he'd love to have as many people there as possible."

"Oh, I plan to go," Penny confirms warily. "I wouldn't miss it. I guess I can't."

She hangs up with Amy and doesn't waste time getting out of the tub, wrapping herself in a towel heading to her couch where she drips everywhere as she considers. Promising herself that he's going to seriously hear it from her if he doesn't pick up this time, she dials Sheldon again.

On the fourth ring, just as she's about to start chewing on her pinky nail, Sheldon's voice comes live over the line. "Dr. Sheldon Cooper."

"It's Penny."

"I know. I have caller ID."

"Then why did you announce yourself?" Penny says, exasperated.

"That's how I answer the phone," he replies, sounding affronted, and Penny sucks in a frustrated breath at how easy and difficult it has always been

_(will always be.)_

with him.

"I got your invitation," she tells him abruptly, and can hear his sharp inhale.

"And are you coming?"

"Sheldon. You've won a Nobel Prize in Physics. Of _course_ I'm coming, you lunatic! I'm so proud of you!" Penny says, failing to keep the shriek-y pitch out of her voice.

"Thank you. And you coming wasn't a forgone conclusion, you know. Leonard isn't. Neither are Amy or Howard or Bernadette. Only my mother and Raj will be able to attend," and it's to his credit that he manages to keep most of the pout out of his voice.

"Well, I'll be there. They can't exactly make me work when I have a friend about to accept a Nobel Prize for proving monopolies or whatever."

"Monopoles," he corrects wryly, "And I won for—if I try to explain this to you, are you going to try to understand it?"

"Right now? Not even a little bit," Penny says, unashamed. "Maybe at your awards ceremony."

"I would advise booking for several days, if you can manage the time off. There are several events that accompany the awards ceremony and banquets that it would be a shame to miss. Besides which, Norway is supposed to be beautiful in the winter," Sheldon adds, as if the fact that he's accepting a prize he's worked his whole life for isn't lure enough for her.

"I really am so happy for you," Penny says softly.

"Thank you. This will, of course, make winning the second prize much easier."

Penny's stomach drops slightly. "You're planning on winning a second Nobel?"

"Well, of course. Luckily, since I've already one the first, I will no longer need to put the majority of my focus upon it. I can instead expect that further hard work will award me another prize and splinter my attention to include other—interests—again," he finishes.

"Like what?" she asks hesitantly, feeling heat climb up her neck to her face. "I miss you, you know. Playing Halo, doing laundry on Saturday nights, hanging out… Everything. I wish I had known…" Penny stops, unsure what to say, how deep to go.

_(How much a part of my life you were. How separate from the visions we could be, and how much I would miss you when you were gone. How much I loved that feeling, even when it hurt me, hurt you, how __**special**__ it was, that connection I've never had with anyone else.)_

Sheldon clears his throat. "The ceremony is on the tenth of December," he says, his voice lower and more intimate than she remembers it being anywhere other than in her head, and it unfurls something warm and glowing in her stomach. "Please plan to be here for at least a week and let me know of your travel plans. I'll send you an email with all of the information, hotels and times."

"Okay," she says faintly. "I'll. I'll look forward to it."

"Me too," Sheldon says and then hangs up, leaving Penny to sit in her living room, starting to shiver, and not even really noticing because she's trying to figure out his last remark.

#

Oslo is freezing this time of year, and Penny has dressed and packed accordingly. With the exception of a few formal dresses for some variety (just in case) and for the actual ceremony, most of her clothing is long-sleeved, many layered, and soft and warm. She changed on her layover in Paris, and sweltered through the rest of the plane ride, but is grateful as she disembarks to snow and a biting wind outside.

Raj meets her at the airport and she hugs him, punching him lightly in the arm. "And just where is everyone else?"

Ever the gentleman, he grabs one of her suitcases and leads the way. "Mrs. Cooper arrives tomorrow. Sheldon is at the hotel already. His schedule is pretty tight, but he refused to believe that I would remember to pick you up from the airport. He set alarms on my phone, in my email, and had the hotel call me at twenty-minute intervals for the hour before I was supposed to leave. That man is crazy."

Penny smiles, flattered. "Crazy works for him," she says, and Raj nods with a quick grin.

"I guess, or we probably wouldn't be here at all, right?"

They get into a cab and he leads her to a hotel in the middle of the city that impresses her terribly—Penny has been waiting for an excuse to come to Europe and although she has the money now to basically do what she wants when she wants, she's been surprised to find herself having to make time even to fly to Mexico for the weekend with Bernadette, or meet Amy in Las Vegas for a few days.

The hotel has high arches, beautifully scalloped edges here and there and turrets (actual turrets!) near the top. The inside consists of bright light that still somehow reminds her of candles, marble everywhere and crystal chandeliers.

Penny sees Raj yawning and waves him up to his room, promising that they'll hang out tomorrow, before heading to the front desk. The man who checks her in is named Carl and she's pleased when he tells her he loves her show—they started showing it in Europe over a year ago—and bashfully asks for her autograph, which she signs with a smile.

After chatting with him for a few minutes, Penny starts to feel exhaustion set in and excuses herself. She gets on the elevator, looking forward to slipping out of everything and sliding between hotel sheets, even if she'll be too jetlagged to actually sleep, when she spots him striding toward her purposefully, his long legs eating up the ground beneath him as he nears.

Penny shoots her arm out to stop the doors from closing on him, and he slips in. She tries to speak and finds her throat dry; swallows, tries again. "Hi."

"Hi."

Here she stops, dazzled by how dark his blue eyes are, how steady on her face. She notices the threading of gray at his temples, not there when she saw him early in the summer. But everything else about him is the same, the width of his shoulders, toned down by the way he rounds them slightly, his height, his long fingers, his smell. The only real other difference is… Something she can't put her finger on. A way of holding himself, with less tension, more… anticipation. He stands close to her, and Penny doesn't back away.

"Thank you for coming," he finally adds.

"I wouldn't have missed it."

"What room are you in?"

"1217."

"Good," he says with satisfaction. "I asked that they placed you across from me. You're actually one room down, but I suppose at the last minute, this will suffice."

"It will? Suffice for what?"

Sheldon's head ducks so fast Penny doesn't have time to process what's happening, and then his mouth is on hers, his hands tangled in her hair. The kiss is shocking and desperate and greedy and gentle and before Penny has even managed to kiss him back fully, he's pulled away to peer down at her.

"Should I apologize for that? I was given to understanding that you aren't dating anyone of significance right now," he murmurs quietly, his fingers retaining their tension on the back of her head.

And she waits for it to happen, that magic thing between them, telling her what could happen, but there's just a silence and a lengthening of time until the elevator dings. Sheldon releases her and they step off together. She breathes in deep and finally says, "I'm not seeing anyone right now, but. But, Sheldon," before stopping, too overwhelmed to go on.

Sheldon leads her to room 1220 and Penny doesn't question following him into his room as he drags her suitcase behind him and the door closes with a gentle whoosh and click. Sheldon sets her suitcase to rest and loosens his tie—and for the first time, Penny notices that he isn't wearing his patent layers, and that he doesn't look at all uncomfortable in the more professional attire—and undoing his top buttons while looking at her in a way that makes her swallow hard.

After a moment of heavy silence, he speaks, his voice unwavering and fluid, and if she didn't know him so well

_(after all this time and still, in so many ways that they've never discussed)_

she might not recognize the slight tremble of insecurity that follows his words.

"So, you need to discuss the ramifications of kissing me although you're not seeing anyone at this time? I—I was under the impression that it would perhaps be welcome at this juncture."

Finally, Penny cracks, her confusion and irritation and longing making her sputter helplessly for a moment before she knots her hands at her sides. "And you don't think you might have wanted to give _me_ a heads' up about all of this? I mean, it's obvious you talked to Leonard, and Amy—"

"And Raj and my mother," Sheldon supplies helpfully. "Although when talking to my mother I did leave out my rather potent sexual interest in you."

"Of _ course_ you did," Penny bites out, refusing to be deterred by what might be the most distracting statement she's ever heard in her life. "I have not seen you in _six months. _You were one of the most important people in my life and you practically disappeared from me! You never returned my calls, you try to avoid me whenever there's something going on with the group and for God's sake, Sheldon, you started talking to your ex-fiancée again before me! Whether or not I would welcome your advances, don't you think I deserve some—I don't know, _dating_? _Courting_? _Anything?!_"

"That's why I invited you here," Sheldon says awkwardly. "I've arranged several suitable outings that I believe you'll enjoy, along with a few that I'll enjoy that I believe you won't mind too much. It's why I asked you to extend your stay."

"But—But!"

"And of course I talked to others," he says, more calmly now. "I would hardly endeavor to make any sort of overture like this without gaining some advice from people more well-versed in social skills than I am. I did consider asking you how I should proceed, but Leonard informed me that wouldn't be the wisest course of action."

Penny sniffs derisively. "A wiser course of action might have been letting me know you were thinking about me in the last oh, I don't know, three _years._"

Sheldon purses his lips and he stares at her until she feels tiny under his gaze. She recognizes him now enough to see how much he's changed—he seems so _solid_, so _capable_. So much more like a man than he did when they first met, and even when they stopped speaking, and she wonders if it was the award or just him, finally growing up.

"I was thinking about you, Penny. Therein lied the problem. I thought about you when I was at work. I thought about you when Leonard ate breakfast across from me with a sickening smile on his face after spending the night with you. I even thought about you sometimes when someone I loved was sleeping in my arms. I thought about you when handing you glasses, and playing games, and eating dinner and your thigh would brush mine, and being hugged by you and ring shopping for someone else and dozens of other times and _that was the problem, Penny_—I couldn't _stop _thinking about you whenever you were around and I couldn't focus on my life's ambition or my friendship with Leonard or how much I cared about Amy whenever it happened and so I _had to stop seeing you,_" he ends on a half-shout, his Texan accent coming through thick and twang-y.

The air in the room stills as she absorbs his words and she realizes that tears are coursing down her cheeks. "I never—I thought so, but I could never be sure you saw… I mean, we didn't really…"

"I saw." Sheldon returns flatly. "I saw and I wanted and I put my ambition for this prize first because you would have engulfed every aspect of my life. Amy was already doing so. I put my work before everything because—"

"Because that's who you had to be," Penny finishes for him.

His breath is long on a sigh that sounds tired. "Yes. But now…"

"But now you're free to go after other things you want."

Sheldon looks at her; reaches up and undoes another button. She notices he's wearing a white T-shirt underneath his dress shirt and her heart skips strangely.

"Yes."

Penny holds her breath. "And what you want now is me."

"Yes. Although it is an unfinished statement, as I have wanted to pursue you for—"

"Sheldon," she interrupts wonderingly. "You seemed so—so uninterested. So unmovable. Like you never wanted to change."

"Everything changes, Penny. It's one of the few clear constants in science. But I can assure you I was not uninterested." His beautiful mouth quirks with amusement. "Immovable yes. Like in my favorite paradox."

"What?"

"The unstoppable force paradox," he tells her seriously, as though she can focus on anything else right now. "Quite apt, if you think about it."

"What is it?"

"It's the question of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object."

"Well." Penny licks her lips and she shuffles forward. "Well, let's just find out."

She closes the space between them and smoothes her hands up his chest, cupping them over his shoulders. Sheldon's eyes dilate as he processes her words and suddenly he's there, everywhere, enveloping her. His mouth covers hers, their breath mingles as her jacket and layers of clothing start to fall away. The kiss makes her dizzy, so deep and rich, so potently _what she always knew it would be_ that she sags against his body, grateful for his solidity and the arms that encircle her so she doesn't fall.

His hands are hot on her skin when he pulls off her shirt and when he fumbles with the clasp on her bra and hesitates nervously before cupping her breasts in his large hands she lets out a breath of laughter because it doesn't feel like a fumble, it feels like learning something that you've always suspected you would love if you could ever get around to trying it.

"Penny," he mumbles breathlessly after she moans into his mouth—his hands on her are truly delicious, she thinks—and starts returning the favor by removing his clothes.

"Yeah?"

"I want—I want to—"

"Thank _God_, because I've wanted to for _years_," she says, and finally admitting it out loud makes her feel free of something she never really knew she was carrying around.

Sheldon chuckles, a cross between his breathless, hiccupy laugh and a deeper, more knowing sound. His shirt and t-shirt hit the ground with a whisper and he kisses her intensely, hotly, as her hand tentatively comes to rest over his erection, the length of which is pushing against the front of his pants, tenting it almost obscenely. They both still for a moment and then Sheldon has pulled her to him, almost roughly, so tight she can barely breathe, and she can feel every inch of him from her shoulder to her knees.

"How long has it been for you since—"

"Three years," he returns grimly and Penny finds herself delighted and unbearably turned-on by the almost-growl in his voice as he scoots in an awkward hobble toward to bed, so as to not lose bodily contact with her. "It was not as easy to return to celibacy as it was to maintain it before I started having intercourse."

They half-fall onto the bed, and Sheldon takes the brunt of it with a small, "oof," making Penny giggle. She spreads her legs on top of him, easing down to rub her core against his as he bucks his hips desperately and finds her nipple with his mouth.

She arches into the sensation, fisting her hands tight in his hair, holding him against her. He uses his tongue and teeth and lips and her nipples pebble in his mouth almost painfully, one and then the other, he keeps switching off, his fingertips sliding up the crevice of her ass through her jeans, so she can't follow a train of thought.

After a moment he buries his face in her neck and good lord, even that's sexy, the feel of his heavy breathing against her skin as he tries to calm down for a moment. "Penny, when was your last STD screening?"

Penny doesn't pause in the ministrations of her hips, slowly grinding against his arousal, and though she feels like she should be offended or maybe turned off—and almost definitely would be with another guy; this discussion should have happened way sooner, but this is _Sheldon_, after all—she feels nothing but anticipation and a vague sense of nervousness.

"A little over two years ago," she says softly. She feels Sheldon tense for a moment underneath her, and continues, "But I haven't slept with anyone since before that."

Sheldon relaxes and there it is again, that gaze that pins her in place as he tries to work out the ramifications of what she's just admitted to. After a moment, she can practically _see_ when he decides to figure it out _later_, and he grabs her hips in his hands, flips her onto her back and rolls on top of her.

"_Jesus, Sheldon,"_ she lets out in a gasp as he unzips her jeans and starts yanking them down with her panties, almost roughly, over her legs.

When she's fully naked beneath him, he stops to look at her for a moment. Penny feels pink with excitement, her whole body flushed in a way she's not sure it's ever been before, and the sheer satisfaction in his eyes as he looks at her makes her feel like she's glowing.

"You know," he says thoughtfully, working his belt open. "Mentioning Jesus at the Nobel awards ceremony for physics might get you kicked out."

Penny reaches out her hands to cover his. The zipper sliding open on his pants seems unbearable, but finally they're open, and his pants loosen enough that she can dip her hands inside while he works them off.

"Then you'd better not tell anyone. Because I think I'll be saying it a lot," she whispers, and then grins when Sheldon laughs, low in her ear. She wonders briefly that he had this in him, this Sheldon in this moment, and what it took to get him here before deciding it doesn't matter and that she just wants to enjoy it.

His eyes droop as she closes her fist around the length of him and squeezes. Pulling herself onto her knees, Penny leans forward, dips her head down and finally does something she only now realizes she's been fantasizing about for years—takes him in her mouth.

Sheldon sits back on his heels and his fingers gather in the comforter of the bed, great handfuls of it, as he groans. "_Penny."_

Penny takes him in further, working her tongue against the underside of his shaft, timing the motion with her hand at the base. Her head bobs and Sheldon thrusts lightly against her in uncertain little movements and after a few moments, she raises her head with a wicked little sparkle in her eye. "Like that?"

"You probably shouldn't continue," he warns her breathlessly, "As it has been several years for me and I have the strong suspicion that I may not be able to hold out under such ministrations. But yes. I did."

Penny stares at him, and without warning, a wave of unbelievable tenderness sweeps over her. He is the strangest, most frustrating man she's ever met, and though she has loved others—even other versions of him—she loves him so totally in this moment, she doesn't know what to do with it, how to show him; awkward, difficult Sheldon, naked and as open as a flower in front of her.

Penny scoots closer to him, wraps her arms around his neck and sits on her knees, trying to spill her secrets into the kiss she gives him. His arms are tight around her waist, like he knows what she's saying

_(of course he does)_

and the kiss is slow, and moist, and sweet and long. She pulls him back down on top of her and smiles as he produces a condom from the nightstand. After putting it on him (and even that's sexy, the sweep of his lashes on his cheeks as her hands roll the condom over the length of him), she finds herself at the precipice, with Sheldon poised between her legs.

Their eyes lock and then she feels the push of him inside of her. It's been so long, his intrusion would definitely hurt if she wasn't so damned wet, just from wanting him, just from kissing him and being kissed by him. But there's no pain, just the same delectable ache that she's had around him for years, only now it's concentrated at the point where their bodies meet. Sheldon glances down, sees them connected, and his shoulders tense; his eyes glint at her.

Experimentally, he thrusts lightly, shallowly, inside her. Penny finds herself whispering nonsensical words of encouragement, telling him _yes, that feels good, go deeper, oh, please, Sheldon_, and hearing his responses, half scientific, _adjust your right leg outward; it'll cause more friction against your clitoris, _and half almost caveman grunting, in time with his thrusts, _Penny. Penny. Penny._

Her moans reach a crescendo as the friction works its magic, and Sheldon fills her so completely for a moment she can't remember what it's like to not be making love to him. After years of insight and secrets and wanting, he seems to instinctively know how to touch her to make her feel good, and vice versa.

When he bites the cords where her neck meets her shoulder, her body lights up like a Christmas tree and the combination of that, his out of control thrusts, and his pubic bone rubbing against her clitoris make her fall over the edge, shuddering against him, around him, gripping his ass tight with her fingers as she pulls him into her, harder, and harder, and harder.

She barely hears Sheldon's drawn-out groan, but she feels him stiffen over her, deep inside her, holding himself in place as he comes. It seems to take forever, these perfect shining, frozen moments of heat, and no time at all.

Sheldon rests heavily on her for a moment, catching his breath, before rolling to the side. He disposes of the condom, tying it off neatly, and then turns back to kiss her slowly, like a thank you or a promise, and she feels that glow again, the one she just fanned to a wildfire, start again low in her stomach.

He takes her hand and she gets up with him, doesn't say a word as he leads her to the shower and waits while he adjusts the temperature to his liking. The shower stall in the hotel is luxurious, filled with yet more marble, and two wide gold showerheads on opposite sides. As the steam begins rising out of the stall, he leads her inside and shuts the door behind them.

After that, it seems a series of blurry moments, whether because of the steam or Sheldon's scent enveloping her, or her sheer happiness, she can't tell.

_Sheldon, carefully washing her with a washcloth, paying special attention to her buttocks and between her legs._

_Allowing him to wash himself as per his specifications with a separate washcloth before taking it from him and having her turn; noticing that he's already half-hard again before she touches him._

_Sheldon, on his knees before her, plying her open with his lips and tongue, licking into her, making her gasp and struggle to push against him or pull away because it feels too good._

_Handing him the condom she filched from the nightstand before they came in, and the relief on his face. _

_Being pinned against the wall, her legs splayed wide, knees draped over his surprisingly strong forearms as he pounds into her, making her shriek and sob with pleasure, making her irrationally grateful that he brought a set of adhesive ducks from home._

#

Penny dreams.

She dreams of looking into a crystal ball where she sees… people shopping in a mall. For some reason, that doesn't feel right; she was expecting to see Sheldon there. She searches for him in the sphere, and though the scene changes from place to place, Sheldon is never there.

Finally, a skim of fingertips against the side of her hand. Penny looks up, and Sheldon is sitting beside her.

"I was looking for you," she says with exasperation.

"I was otherwise occupied," Sheldon says, and his eyebrows inch up. "And anyway, that never really works."

"It's been working for years," Penny argues.

"No it hasn't."

"Then why did I always know where you are?" she asks smugly.

"That's not a source of real-time events," he points out. "I was never in there."

"You weren't?"

"No, but I'm here now," he says, and Penny wakes up with a start.

Sheldon is looking at her calmly, waiting. Penny stretches, yawns, and leans over to give him a close-mouthed kiss—God knows what he would do if she tried to kiss him with morning breath; although, seriously, after last night, she can no longer assume he doesn't know how to adapt.

"I'm unsure of morning etiquette," Sheldon offers when she doesn't say anything. "Amy usually went home at night, and when she didn't, I would generally get up when my internal alarm went off. I wasn't sure if your eleven-o'clock rule still stood, or of how to proceed. We probably should have discussed that last night. I need to be ready for a morning conference in precisely 72 minutes."

"How long does it usually take you to get ready?" Penny asks.

"Since I won't be making my own breakfast this morning, and instead have ordered room service to be delivered in promptly 42 minutes, my morning routine will be accomplished in roughly 35 minutes total, including the time it takes to eat. English muffins and oatmeal. I set an order for you, as well, on the chance that things would advance the way I had anticipated. I ordered you eggs and bacon, with a side of oatmeal, since your regard for the proper balance of fiber in your diet has always been negligible."

"Thank you. I think." She pauses. "So, you have a few minutes before you need to start getting ready?"

"I believe I can spare… eleven minutes at this point."

"Good." Penny rolls over, mounts him, and roots around in the nightstand for another condom. Sheldon seems surprised for some reason, but willing, and they make love quickly, quietly.

Sheldon is covered with a fine layer of sweat when they finish, a flush of contentment on his face. He offers to share his shower again, but Penny waves him in on his own, knowing the temptation would be too fierce to not make love to him again.

She puts on one of the plush bathrobes and wanders around the room, texting Raj to plan her day. Sometime in the middle of the night, after one of many lovemaking sessions, Penny had agreed to pick up Mary and take care of any of the other minutiae that Sheldon (and occasionally Raj, as he would be attending most of the conferences) was unable to.

For some reason, she feels unsettled, and she can't figure it out; she isn't unhappy, in fact, she can't remember the last time she felt this happy. And it's the certain, sure kind of happiness that doesn't feel as though it can be leeched away from her, so she's floundering to figure out what's wrong when it hits her: she hasn't felt the magic since she's seen Sheldon again.

They haven't really talked about their relationship with the exception of his professing of intent the previous night. Penny sort of knows how it will go, she can see it; flying back to California with him, seeing him every night she's free, every night he is, and it still not being enough until she moves in with him.

She sees them finding a new place, all their own, a relaxing home away from prying eyes for Penny and a place where Sheldon feels comfortable, can be himself with his host of craziness, and Penny won't, for the most part, mind.

She knows they'll argue, and that when he'll make her feel stupid it will be unintentional, but that now he'll have the presence of mind (mostly) to apologize. She knows they won't be able to keep their hands off each other for months and probably years to come, because this has been stewing for so many years, and she's not remotely surprised that it's as _good_ as it is, as _exciting, _and she knows it will stay that way.

She's not even worried about boring him, a fear that occasionally used to plague her thoughts when she was with Leonard, because Sheldon is Sheldon, and if he gets bored, he'll simply change the subject or tell her he wants to do something different and that will be that; he's the most remarkably steadfast man she's ever met, in that way.

What bothers her is the fact that, although she can see it, she can't _see_ it. This knowledge of coming events comes from the quiet place inside her that has loved him for so long, but not from her inherent knowing of—of the future, of the present, of alternate worlds, whatever. She feels like she should be able to guarantee herself that, give both of them that gift.

Room service arrives and Penny sets it up. Sheldon steps out of the bathroom, steam billowing out behind him, one towel around his waist, another rubbing against his hair, and he looks at her almost shyly.

He makes short work of getting dressed, and joins her at the small table it he corner.

And suddenly, she hears her Nana's voice, clear as a bell, in her head. _When in doubt, honey, just __**ask.**_

"Sheldon?"

He glances up from buttering the English muffin. "Yes?"

"I haven't seen—I mean, I haven't been _able_ to see anything since I got here. You know, like I—I can," she says lamely. "You know, like I have. About us."

"Well, I should hope not," Sheldon responds, unruffled, and starts to add a packet of brown sugar to his oatmeal.

"What do you mean?"

Sheldon stirs the oatmeal and looks at her seriously. "It's my understanding that these events never came to pass, at least in this reality. If you were having, for lack of a better word, visions about the two of us at this juncture, I would assume it was the route of events that where happening elsewhere. Not here."

She feels a sense of relief, a pinch of loss, to have it explained so easily. "So you think it won't ever happen again?"

"I can't assume that. I've never met anyone else with the evolutionary skill to perceive alternate realities before. But I would hope that if it did happen again, it wasn't about our future." He clears his throat awkwardly. "Which I perhaps should have mentioned that I have planning on having with you."

A gentle warmth spreads through Penny and she smiles at him. "I know. I'm planning on that, too."

"Does it bother you, not knowing what could be?" he asks.

Penny looks around the lush hotel suite, finally noticing the food beneath her (how did she not know she was _starving_?), and at the man across from her, so attentive and vaguely worried, who she knows so well and is still only just learning. She covers his hand with hers, loves the feel of his smooth long fingers under her palm, and he turns his hand over to clasp hers lightly.

"No," she says, honestly, her future spread out before her like a bright road map. "I'm just glad for everything that _will_ be."

End


End file.
